


Healing Ties

by overlordpotatoe



Series: Frayed Ties [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Slavery, Slaves, Were-Creatures, Werewolf, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 43,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27199087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overlordpotatoe/pseuds/overlordpotatoe
Summary: Fanner has spent his entire life being an unwanted failure of a Companion, so even if training to become a healer means a life of isolation and pain it isn’t so bad because at least it’s something he’s good at. At least he’s valued.And then one day things go too far and he proves himself the ultimate failure at that as well. Afraid of the consequences of his actions, he runs away.Yore isn’t expecting to find an injured Companion of all things on his way back home, and he’s immediately suspicious. He wants to treat the young man kindly and tell him everything is going to be okay, but there’s too much at stake to risk telling him anything until Yore can be sure he’s not there to spy on them.Can they find trust in one another while they’re both holding onto so many secrets?
Series: Frayed Ties [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985620
Comments: 64
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

Fanner stared down at his hand as Whelan bent his pinkie at the knuckle and twisted it from side to side. The movement didn’t hurt as much as it had yesterday, but he still didn’t have full feeling in it.

“How does it feel?” Whelan asked. 

Whelan had just come back from visiting Mr Burrows and he’d brought a mysterious blue box with him. Technically it was against the law to leave Fanner alone like that, but there were a lot of things they were doing that weren’t exactly legal. That’s why they were living in this little cabin bordering the woods so far away from other people.

“Better than yesterday,” Fanner said. He had been trained to be positive, never to complain, but Whelan wanted the truth. This was Fanner’s compromise.

Whelan nodded and dropped Fanner’s hand. “Well, I’m happy with that. If you can grow back half a finger, you can grow back other things as well. Strip down and go lay on the table.”

Fanner froze. “You don’t have to tie me down. I can stay still. I promise.”

“Not for this you can’t.”

“Sir—”

“Fanner.” Whelan looked him directly in the eye. “I don’t give two shits about keeping you in check when it comes to your manners, but don’t you forget who’s in charge here. If I tell you to do something then you do it.”

Fanner nodded and swallowed down a lump in his throat as he headed for the small room at the back of the cottage. He didn’t dare ask what Whelan was going to do to him. He didn’t want to know.

Until a week ago, all Whelan had ever done was cut him to observe his healing ability. Fanner had hated it, but it had become predictable enough, in a sense, that he could just send his mind elsewhere while he waited for his body to take care of it.

Then last week Whelan had strapped him to the table and brought out the big, heavy butcher’s knife he used to slaughter chickens. Whelan had told Fanner to hold out his pinkie finger and Fanner had begged him not to do it because by this point he knew exactly what was about to happen, but that had only served to irritate Whelan. Fanner had presented his pinkie and Whelan had slammed the butcher’s knife down on it, severing it just above the second knuckle.

Fanner hadn’t known if it would grow back. Neither had Whelan, which was why he’d run the experiment. Fanner still wasn’t sure why it mattered. Surely a healer’s purpose was to heal others. What did having parts of their own body removed and growing them back have to do with anything? Did Whelan want to know if Fanner could potentially grow other people’s body parts back? It had taken a week of his body working constantly to grow back just half a finger. Surely, in terms of potential usefulness, that wasn’t an avenue worth pursuing.

Fanner stripped out of his clothes, folded them neatly and set them down well out of the way of whatever was about to happen, and climbed onto the table.

“On your back,” Whelan said as he entered the room.

Fanner complied, shutting his eyes as Whelan began to do up the wrist straps.

“Now, I’m going to need you to stay  _ very _ still for this,” Whelan said as he did up the last of the leg straps. “I have a reference diagram, but I’ve never done surgery before.”

“...Surgery?” Fanner asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Whelan picked up a piece of paper and held it up so Fanner could see. It was a diagram of human anatomy, displaying the positions of all of the organs.

Fanner twisted his wrists against the straps, but they were tight and unyielding. “What are you going to do?”

“If you can regrow a finger, you can regrow an organ — probably. If it turns out you can’t, it won’t be too much of a problem, though. I’m going to take a kidney.” He poked his finger at a point on the diagram just below the ribcage. “You have two of those.”

Fanner yanked against his bindings more insistently. “I—I don’t think you can just cut things out of people without knowing what you’re doing. You’ll kill me.”

“Of course you can’t do that to people. But you can do it to a mage who can heal himself. You’ll be fine.”

“You could do another finger, or, or—”

Whelan shook his head. “Has to be an organ, and the kidney’s the easiest and safest. Probably? I don’t know, that’s what I was told. Mr Burrows wants to know what happens if one of your organs is transplanted into someone else. I have a special box I went and picked up this morning that’ll keep it cold, and the finger didn’t seem to decay fast so I reckon it’ll all be fine.” Whelan went over to the table where all of his tools were spread out and selected a scalpel. “Seriously, though. Stay still. If I kill you, Mr Burrows will kill  _ me _ .”

“Nononono,” Fanner begged as Whelan approached with the scalpel, but he knew begging was useless. Though Whelan was less concerned with discipline and proper behaviour than most of the people who had been responsible for Fanner throughout his life, he also possessed the least empathy.

As Whelan braced a hand on Fanner’s chest to hold him still, Fanner squeezed his eyes shut and did his best to stay calm, but any chance of that vanished the second he felt the slice of the scalpel through his skin.

Fanner screamed and thrashed as best he could, but the straps were tight and well positioned.

“Stay  _ still _ ,” Whelan said through gritted teeth as he used his elbow to pin Fanner and dug his fingers into the gash he’d sliced open on Fanner’s side.

The smell of blood hung thick in the air, the wetness of it pooled under Fanner, and it pitter pattered as it dripped to the ground. Fanner struggled with renewed vigor as Whelan sliced the gash wider, deeper.

Blood sprayed out over Whelan and Whelan swore. The scalpel clattered to the ground as Whelan pressed both his hands down against the flow of blood. “Fuck,” Whelan said as he moved his hands for a second to look at what he’d done, then glanced at his diagram that was now half soaked in blood. “I think I should’ve come in from the other side. Fucking intestines are in the way.”

Fanner wasn’t screaming or struggling anymore. Holding still was no longer an impossible challenge. Some deep instinct told him not to move.

“You need to fucking heal this, okay? I think I nicked a— what are the big veins called? Arteries?” He glanced at his diagram again. “Are there even arteries in that part of you? Fuck.”

There was too much damage and Fanner’s thoughts had scattered. He  _ couldn’t _ heal himself. Maybe if he’d had more energy, but Whelan never gave him time to recover between his experiments.

Just as Fanner thought he would just shut his eyes and give up, he felt something burning and desperate rise up from within him. He pulled against the wrist restraint again, but this time it snapped free. He grabbed Whelan’s wrist and their eyes met, and then Fanner  _ pulled _ , rapidly drawing energy from Whelan through the connection until gravity pulled them apart as Whelan dropped to the floor.

Fanner stared up at the ceiling, his mind going distant as Whelan’s energy coursed through him and slowed the bleeding until the splattering of blood hitting the floor turned into a slow drip, drip, drip.


	2. Chapter 2

Fanner didn’t know how long he’d laid there for, but by the time he undid the strap binding his other wrist and sat up the blood that had pooled beneath him had grown thick and tacky. Whelan still lay on the floor where he’d fallen. He hadn’t moved.

Fanner looked at the cuff that was still around his wrist from the restraint. The strap had been burned through. Fanner hadn’t known he could make fire. He undid the buckle and dropped the cuff to the floor.

There was still an open gash in his side, and when he moved things poked out of it that he’d really prefer stayed inside of him. Fanner undid the leg restraints and then pinched the skin on his side together to hold everything in place as he got up.

He ignored Whelan for now. What had he done?

There were bandages in a cupboard at the back of the room. Fanner wrapped one tight around his midsection, holding everything in place.

Was he going to die? Part of him wanted to. It would simplify things.

Fanner went and checked on Whelan. His eyes were open, staring up. He showed no signs of breathing. Fanner took a shaky breath as he carefully knelt and placed a hand on Whelan’s arm, confirming what he already knew: Whelan was dead.

Fanner sat on the floor next to the body, in a pool of his own blood, his arms wrapping around his knees.  _ This _ was why healers were illegal. They were too dangerous.

Fanner had known for some time now that he could draw energy out of other living things. They had an old cow outside that he took energy from to help restore himself. He’d always felt like he needed to be careful with it, that taking too much could harm her and that using a person for this purpose could be risky. He had even once accidentally knocked her unconscious, but it had never occurred to him that he might kill someone that way in a moment of desperation. It had never occurred to him that if he was put in such a situation he wouldn’t just let himself die.

Mr Burrows was expecting that kidney. How long would he wait before he came to find out what had happened? What would he do when he saw what Fanner had done?

Surely Fanner would be killed. Mr Burrows had been willing to defy the law by intentionally breeding and keeping a healer, but now that Whelan was gone he wouldn’t risk his own life by dealing with Fanner directly. Especially not now that he’d proven himself dangerous.

Part of him — a large part of him — wanted to just wait and let it happen. What else could he do? He had nobody else, nowhere else to go. Even if he did, he had a tracking chip inserted into his back, next to his spine. They would find him.

He was quite flexible, though, and he  _ was _ a healer. Unlike others, he had a sense of exactly where his chip was.

Fanner found himself picking up the scalpel and reaching around to cut into his skin, but his hand was shaking and even though he could reach the part of his back where the chip was located it wasn’t easy to angle the scalpel correctly. A stream of fresh blood trickled down his back, but at this point pain and injury meant nothing.

A single, confident press and the scalpel lodged deep in his skin, not quite where he needed it, but if he angled it and pressed deeper… yes, that was it. He pulled the scalpel out and let it drop to the floor and then pressed against the sides of the cut with blood slick fingers until he felt the chip slip out.

He held the tiny chip out in front of him on his fingertip and stared at it, the pit of dread deepening in his stomach.

Why had he done this?

Maybe he could just poke it back in and nobody would ever know. He could still take this back, right? Except… except he was pretty sure the chips monitored lifesigns, and if his was no longer inside his body…

He was so  _ stupid _ . Danya and Duran had always insisted that he wasn’t, that he was just easily distracted and didn’t always stop to think things through and that wasn’t the same as being stupid, but it was going to get him killed no matter what you wanted to call it.

It was hard to think, so he gave up on trying and just acted. He went outside, walked down the hill, and dunked himself in the creek. He had always hated washing himself by hand. Magic was so much more efficient, especially with things like blood. He couldn’t spare the energy just then, though, so he rinsed himself as well as he could in just a few minutes and called it good enough.

He headed back inside, dried himself, and replaced his wet bandages with dry ones. His insides were no longer threatening to escape his body, but one wrong movement could tear the wound back open and change that. Fanner dressed, Fanner put on his travelling cloak to disguise his extremely noticeable golden hair, and Fanner left the house.

There were two options before him now. He could take the horse and follow the road to… somewhere. The nearest city, he supposed. But then what? There was no disguising what he was. Nobody would offer him safe harbour.

The other option was to walk off into the woods. This also seemed like an extremely bad and deadly idea, but Fanner at least felt like there was uncertainty attached to it. He literally did not know what he might find out there. Sure, the leading possibilities were monsters that would eat him or eventual death from starvation, but at this point he fancied his chances with monsters better than with humans.

Fanner flipped his hood up, picked a direction, and walked off into the woods.

Fanner had been walking for around half an hour before the pain really started to hit him. Every step hurt. Every  _ breath _ hurt. His side was sliced open deep enough that his  _ intestines _ had been threatening to spill out. The cuts on his back were nothing in comparison, but they stung too.

And he was tired. The adrenaline and the energy he’d stolen from Whelan had kept him on his feet this long, but he had lost more blood than he’d realised he’d had in his body. He shouldn’t have still been standing, let alone walking around.

He found a stream and drank from it. He hadn’t brought anything with him but the clothes on his back. No food or water or tools to make a fire. Though apparently he could make fire on his own.  _ That _ was new.

He sat down to rest, just for a minute, and then suddenly the light was dimmer and he realised the sun had started to set. He forced himself to stand, to keep walking, but when he looked around he realised he didn’t remember which way he had been going.

Well, it didn’t really matter as long as he didn’t end up back at the cottage. He picked a direction and walked.

#

Yore lifted his big, furry head and drew in a deep breath through his nose. The smell of mage blood hung in the air. His nose didn’t work as well as it once had, but that was a smell he’d become all too familiar with in recent years. He picked up the bag containing his belongings in his mouth and turned towards the direction of the smell.


	3. Chapter 3

A crumpled form lay curled up at the base of a tree, completely covered by a large, dark blue cloak. The person was unmoving, but they were breathing. Yore could hear it.

Yore shifted, his body contorting itself into a new form. Once upon a time shifting had been smooth and painless, but now it felt like his bones were made of shattered glass. He stood up on two feet and dressed himself in the clothes from his bag.

By the time he was done the figure still hadn’t moved, but Yore’s hearing wasn’t as sharp in this form so he couldn’t just listen to see if their heart rate had sped up to gauge whether he’d been noticed or not.

Yore crouched next to the figure. “Hey, you okay?”

The figure stirred.

“You’re covered in blood, so probably not. Do you need help?”

The figure startled, tried to sit up, and then let out a cry of pain. A young man.

Yore held his hands out in front of himself. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, don’t hurt yourself.”

The young man sat up, more slowly this time, and peered out at Yore from beneath the hood of his cloak. A lock of long hair the colour of actual gold had escaped his hood and caught the light.

“A Companion?” Yore asked. A few years ago he wouldn’t have known what hair like that meant, but by this point he knew enough Companions that he was well informed.

The mage pushed his hair back under his hood, but he surely knew it was too late to hide it.

What was an expensive Companion doing out here? Had he escaped? Had he been left here for dead after his master had had some fun torturing him?

Neither seemed particularly likely. He’d seen some truly awful things done to slaves, but those who were into that sort of thing didn’t usually go for Companions. There were cheaper, more discreet options. And running away? Danya might have had that sort of spirit, but it was rare among Companions. Especially the more expensive ones. A great deal of time and effort was put into training them to be docile and obedient.

“What happened to you?” Yore asked.

The mage looked back at him. He didn’t answer.

There was another possibility. Another reason he might be here. As much as Yore didn’t want to consider it, he might have been planted.

The rebellion had grown over the last few years. They’d kept many things a secret, but the existence of their movement itself could only be hidden so long. They’d freed too many slaves to go unnoticed. If someone was looking to get inside information, planting an injured slave full of tracking chips and listening devices somewhere where he would be found would be an excellent approach.

If that were the case — or even a possibility — Yore would need to reassess his approach to this situation. He couldn’t simply tell this young man what he was involved in and offer him safety and freedom. That would endanger not only himself but his pack and the rebellion as well.

Leaving him here or returning him to wherever he came from simply weren’t options, though. Yore had come to accept that he couldn’t save everyone, but when someone was right in front of him in need of help he would do everything he could.

He would keep what he told the mage to a minimum and let him reach his own conclusions about what Yore intended to do with him. Those conclusions likely wouldn’t be very pleasant or legal, but in terms of consequences it was much better than telling someone who could be a spy all about the rebellion.

The mage had hugged his arms around his legs and was holding very still. He was staring at the ground.

“What’s your name?” Yore tried, but the mage remained silent. “Are you not able to speak? I know a man who’s mute.”

Still no response. Not even a nod or a shake of his head. Maybe he was deaf. Or, more likely, unwilling to talk. Well, Yore could hardly blame him for that. If this wasn’t a set up the mage was a runaway, and by all appearances Yore was human.

“Okay. I don’t need to know your name and I don’t need to know what happened, but I  _ do _ need to know about your injuries. Can I just…”

Yore reached a hand out and the mage startled backwards, holding his hands out in front of him and rapidly shaking his head. His eyes were a very similar light blue to Danya’s.

“Okay.” Yore held his hands up as well, signalling that he was backing down. “You don’t want to be touched. That’s fine. Will you show me where you’re hurt?”

The mage hesitated and then reluctantly nodded. He took his cloak off and hung it over a nearby branch and then pulled off his shirt. There was a bandage wrapped around his midsection, stained a deep red on one side, and then he turned and showed Yore a few nasty looking cuts in the middle of his back.

“Is what’s under that bandage as bad as what’s on your back? Worse?” Yore asked, but of course the mage didn’t answer. “If you need medical help I need to know. I—”

Yore had taken a step towards the mage, and the mage took a startled step back. His foot caught on the root of a tree and he started to stumble, but Yore was there to catch him before he could fall.

The mage let out a cry of pain or maybe fear, but instead of struggling or cowering he shoved his hands in his armpits, tucked his head down, and held very still. 

Yore set him back on his feet and gave him space. “Careful.”

The mage kept his hands under his armpits. He was breathing quickly and he wouldn’t look at Yore anymore.

Yore slowly nodded. “Okay. How about you put your clothes back on and we sit down so you don’t trip over again, and then we can figure out where to go from there?”

The mage followed the instructions methodically. He put his shirt on. He put his cloak on. He carefully sat on the ground. He shoved his hands back under his armpits.

Yore sat down as well. The hands under the armpits thing was odd. Had he been taught not to touch people? For a mage — and particularly a Companion — that was especially cruel.

Which reminded Yore of another concern: the mage would need someone else to balance his magic. Yore didn’t fully understand the concept, but he knew mages got sick when they went too long without having enough direct contact with either a human or another mage. Especially if they used a lot of magic or were injured, as this young man was.

Yore couldn’t help him with that. At least not directly. He was neither a human nor a mage. This situation was likely to get messy. Well, messier than it already inherently was.

Well, one step at a time. He would need to take the mage to someone who had one of the devices that could wipe the tracking chips. Lucas would be preferable, assuming he could be found. Yore didn’t exactly want to take the mage home with him when he might be being tracked.

Yore could have tracked Lucas down in under a day in wolf form, but he’d need to travel on two legs and at the pace of a small and quite injured mage who seemed like he would be unwilling to be carried. This journey would take days, and even if the mage’s injuries caused him no serious problems he would likely ultimately become too out of balance to walk on his own.

Yore shook his head. He was thinking too far ahead again. If they were going to travel, they would need supplies. He could have made do with what he had in his bag on his own, but the mage was in no condition to rough things out.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Yore told the mage. “I have some friends who live nearby, so I’m going to go and ask if they can lend us anything to help us out with this situation. You’re going to wait here while I do that, because if you wander off you’re probably going to hurt yourself even more. Okay?”

The mage stared at the ground. He didn’t respond.

“Okay?” Yore repeated.

The mage didn’t look up, but he did nod.

“Great.” Yore stood up, his joints aching as he moved. “My name’s Yore, by the way. I’ll be back soon.”


	4. Chapter 4

Yore walked off in the direction of the border until he was well out of sight, then stripped out of his clothes, shifted, and looped back around.

He knew the group that guarded this section of the border. They would help him. Yore had never visited Fyh’s settlement before, but his nose showed him the way.

He could see a large fire through the trees and could hear the sounds of laughter. He sprinted in that direction and then slowed down as he got closer so that he wouldn’t startle anyone.

A group of around a dozen satyrs were gathered around a massive bonfire. They had the heads and torsos of humans and the legs and horns of goats. They were all men. Generally speaking, those who had been granted magic by the fae could only reproduce within their own kind, but satyrs were an exception to this. Women of all kinds were advised not to have sex with them.

Several of the satyrs were eating and drinking. One of them was sitting against a tree, whittling something.

Another was fucking what appeared to be some sort of forest troll. He was small — at least as far as trolls went — fat, and had hair like moss. Yore had never seen anything quite like it before, but the troll seemed to be enjoying what was happening so he wouldn’t question it.

“It’s a fuckin’ wolf!” the satyr who was copulating with the troll shouted, but he didn’t stop what he was doing.

Yore commenced the painful process of shifting back into his human form. He should have done it before making himself known. He hadn’t minded doing it in front of others before the incident when it used to be a fluid and effortless process, but now it felt more vulnerable, more personal.

“No, it’s a fuckin’ werewolf!” Fyh declared from where he sat, perched in a low tree branch. “What brings you our way, Yore?”

“I found a young mage within your territory. He’s hurt.”

Fyh frowned. “Eh? Well, he’s not ours.”

“A Companion. Hair like gold. You don’t know anything about him or how he ended up here?”

“Can’t say I do, but we’ll take him off your hands if you like.” He tilted his head in the direction of the troll. “We like guests.”

Some of the others laughed. There was nothing malicious about it, but Yore got the feeling the mage wouldn’t have appreciated this crowd.

“No. Mages need to be around humans or other mages to keep themselves healthy. I need to get him back to the others as soon as possible.”

“Ah, right,” Fyh said. “Well, you can bring him on over here and we can give you food and bed for the night, have someone check him over. We’d love to have you. You ever fuck in wolf form?”

Yore decided to ignore that last part. “I’m worried he might have been planted within the border as a spy. Until I know any tracking chips and anything else that might have been planted on him have been disabled, I don’t want him to see or hear anything I wouldn’t be comfortable with an enemy human knowing about.”

“You’re a boring man, Yore,” Fyh told him. “All right, then, how can we help you? What do you need?”

“Supplies,” Yore said. “I don’t have anything with me to trade for them, but you can consider it a pack debt and we’ll make good on it at the next meeting of the council.”

Fyh laughed. “You’ve got all you need to pay me right here with you.”

Yore held his gaze. “I’d rather not, thank you.”

“Eh, why not? We don’t have to do the wolf thing if that’s something you lot are weird about.”

“I’d just rather not. I left the mage alone. I need to get back to him.”

“It wouldn’t take long, I promise you that.” Fyh waved a hand before Yore could object again. “Nah, you don’t want to. That’s fine. What supplies do you need?”

“Food and water, clean bandages, and if you have any kind of sleeping mats or blankets that are suitable for travel, that would be great.”

Fyh snapped his fingers at one of the other satyrs, and that satyr immediately stood and scampered off. “He’ll get the stuff for you. And don't worry about any debts. He’s in our territory so this is our problem really, and we don’t know any mages or humans so dealing with it without you woulda been a pain. Guess we coulda just shoved him back over the border for the humans to deal with, but fuck those bastards.”

“Not all humans are bad, you know. I know some good ones.”

“Yeah?” Fyh asked. He didn’t sound convinced.

“Come visit us some time and I’ll introduce you to a man named Hamish. He’d appreciate your style of fun.”

“Huh, well, maybe. A human’s gotta be about the most boring thing to fuck I can think of, but I’ve never done it before and I like to try everything.”

“You’ll love him. Trust me.”

“If you say so,” Fyh said. “How’s that whole revolution thing going, by the way? You’re all tangled up in that, aren’t you?”

“Slow and steady so far, but it’ll hit a boiling point eventually. We can all feel it coming. We’re not as hidden as we used to be and we’ve freed enough slaves that we’re starting to be seen as a genuine threat. The day’s going to come when they’re more afraid of letting us keep doing what we’re doing than they are of marching across the border.”

“A lot of people are going to be angry about you driving them to that.”

“Are you?”

Fyh let out a bark of laughter. “Fuck no. That’s a mistake humans have to make at least once a generation to remind them why they don’t do it. Wonder how long they’d even last over here if nobody went to fight them before they pissed off a wyvern or wandered into the swamps. Fuckers should be grateful we let them have their safe little area to live in.”

“It depends how big of an army they can gather, I guess. I’ve seen inside their military camps, fought alongside them against vampires. You’re right that they don’t know much about what’s on this side of the border, but I think they’re more capable than you might assume.”

“Yeah, well, they can face my bow if they decide to come anywhere near my territory. We’ll keep an eye out for anyone who comes looking for that slave of yours, too. They cross that border, they die.”

Fyh sounded like he was almost hoping they’d give him the chance. Yore wasn’t nearly as bloodthirsty. Perhaps having human friends had softened him to them, but he didn’t think he’d ever been all that keen on killing. It was sometimes necessary, but he found no satisfaction in it.

The satyr who Fyh had sent off scampered back, a surprisingly large backpack and two bedrolls in his arms. “Got that stuff for you.”

Yore opened up the bag and took a quick look inside. He could see bandages and something wrapped in cloth that smelled like smoked venison on top, so he assumed his instructions had been followed. 

“Thank you,” Yore said as he shouldered the bag. “And Fyh, I know you said that I don’t owe you anything, but I appreciate this and I will remember it.”

Fyh waved a dismissive hand. “It’s no problem, but maybe you’ll pay us a visit when you have a bit more time and you’ll take me up on my offer?”

“Mm,” Yore said as he turned to leave. That was unlikely, but not for the reasons Fyh might think.


	5. Chapter 5

Fanner had laid very still and considered running away for a very long time after Yore had left. The laying still part had continued and the running away part had never materialised.

He was almost certain Yore had gone to report his runaway attempt or something along those lines, but he was literally incapable of running just then. He could barely walk. He just had to hope that Yore was genuinely as nice as he seemed.

That was unlikely, though. Fanner had thought Whelan was nice, too, and had fallen in love with him in less than a day. Whelan hadn’t cared if Fanner was fidgety or distractable. He had told him not to bother calling him sir. He had been the first person Fanner had ever met who had been largely indifferent to his behavioural flaws.

And then Whelan had strapped Fanner to a table and Whelan had cut him, because Whelan had never been a nice person. He just hadn’t been someone whose job it was to care about Fanner’s manners.

Whelan was dead now. Fanner had killed him and perhaps the fact that he hadn’t meant to only made it worse. He hadn’t loved Whelan anymore, but he hadn’t wanted him to die. That was a hard thing to want of, essentially, the only person in his life. And he just… he just didn’t want to be a killer.

But he had killed someone, so he was one.

Fanner tensed up as he heard Yore return, but he didn’t move. He felt like a young child hiding under the blankets from a monster. Being quiet and still would do nothing to help him avoid the notice of someone who had specifically returned to him.

“How are you doing?” Yore asked. He had a deep, gravelly voice.

Fanner stayed quiet, stayed still. He was still waiting for Yore to get angry at him for ignoring his questions.

“Hm,” Yore said. “I got a couple of bedrolls if you’d like to not be laying on the ground.”

A bedroll sounded nice. Fanner slowly, gingerly sat up. Yore really did have bedrolls. He had an entire bag full of stuff. Had he actually gone to get supplies? Who from? Fanner was well aware that nobody else lived around here. They’d chosen the cottage specifically because they could get along with their business without fear of disruption by neighbours.

“I got clean bandages, too,” Yore said, holding up a roll of cloth. “Are you ready to let me touch you, or do you want to do this yourself?”

Fanner held his hand out for the bandages.

“Fair enough,” Yore said.

“Thank you, sir,” Fanner said as the bandages changed hands. As soon as the words had left his mouth he realised what he’d done. Fanner let out a long sigh as his eyes fell shut.

“Ah, so you do talk,” Yore said. “It’s okay. I thought that was probably the case. Are you ready to tell me your name yet?”

Fanner bit down on the inside of his cheek and stayed silent.

“Yeah, I figured. Well, let’s not get worked up about it. There are bandages that need to be changed.”

Right. Fanner could do that. He took off his cloak and then his shirt, and then carefully started unwrapping the bandage. His face squeezed in pain as he pulled it away from where it had become stuck to the wound with dried blood and it began bleeding anew.

Yore drew a breath in through his teeth. “That looks nasty.”

It did. Not as bad as it had when it had first happened, but it was still a deep, open wound.

Yore held a rag dampened with water out to him. “Here.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fanner murmured, the words coming out of him involuntarily again. He dabbed blood away from the area surrounding the wound.

“That should really be stitched, but I didn’t think to ask for a needle and thread,” Yore said as he searched through the bag. “I didn’t realise it was that bad.”

Fanner shrugged. That was a rude way to respond, but probably less rude than not responding at all.

He had never been hurt this badly before, but it would  _ probably _ be fine. If he could grow back a finger there was no reason his body couldn’t recover from this. It would just take time. Fanner finished cleaning the area and wrapped the fresh bandage over the wound.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Yore asked.

Fanner kept his eyes down, didn’t respond. He rolled the used bandage up into a tight little bundle.

“Yeah, figured.” Yore rolled one of the bedrolls across the ground towards Fanner. “Well, I know animal bites, and that isn’t one, so I’m guessing someone did that to you. But why? You’re an expensive Companion, right?”

Not anymore. He’d been an expensive Companion, and then he’d been a healer, and now he was just a runaway. He’d been a failure at all of those things. 

As a Companion he’d had near perfect looks, but he’d never been able to focus well enough to keep his behaviour in check. As a healer… well, he’d just killed someone, which was the opposite of what a healer ought to do. And now, as a runaway, he’d almost immediately been caught. He could only imagine what he would become, and subsequently fail at, next.

Yore stood up slowly and made a face as he stretched out his back. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties or so, but he moved like someone who was past middle age whose joints were starting to fail them. Maybe it was because he was extremely tall. Fanner had heard that tall people were more likely to experience back pain, and Yore was the tallest person Fanner had ever seen.

He was also the most interesting looking in general. He had striking amber eyes that were unlike anything Fanner had ever seen before and black, wavy hair that hung nearly to his chin. There was a smattering of small scars down both sides of his neck. Was that why his voice sounded so rough? Had he sustained some injury that had damaged his vocal cords?

“I’m going to get a fire going,” Yore said. “There’s food and drink in the bag if you want anything.”

Fanner eyed the bag like it was a trap. It may as well have been. He was a slave, a Companion. How could he just decide for himself what he would take?

Yet, as a Companion, he had also been trained to follow instructions, even if they contradicted other aspects of his training. They were trained to be polite and docile and submissive, but if their masters wanted something else from them they weren’t to turn them down.

But, of course, Yore was  _ not _ his master. Fanner still didn’t know what was going on, but that part he was quite sure of. Yore was not his master and had not been given charge of Fanner by his master. He was to be polite, yes, but not necessarily unwaveringly obedient.

“You seem not to be eating,” Yore said as he dumped the pile of sticks he’d gathered onto the ground in front of Fanner. He pulled a bundle out of the bag and unwrapped it. “There’s smoked venison here. You want some of this?”

Fanner nodded.

Yore picked a piece up and held it out towards Fanner. Fanner leant forward, his mouth opening.

“Okay,” Yore said as Fanner took the meat with his teeth, his eyebrows rising. He passed Fanner the rest of the bundle of meat. “I think you can manage to feed yourself.”

Fanner nodded, his eyes dropping. A miscalculation, definitely. This man was  _ not _ his master. He was not supposed to be seducing him.

Of course, he also wasn’t supposed to be killing people or cutting the chip out of his back or running away. Why was he still so worried about what he was  _ supposed _ to be doing? All that mattered now was survival. Whether that meant endearing himself to this man, seducing him, or running away from him.

But for now it meant eating this venison, because he couldn’t do much at all with his body in this condition. Certainly not run away, and he suspected he was more attractive without a huge, weeping gash in his side.

Fanner laid out his bedroll, snuggled down in it, and ate the smoked venison while Yore started a fire. He did his best to forget about the monsters who probably lived out here and the less literal monsters who would be after him. For this moment, he did his best to imagine he and Yore were just two friends travelling together and that everything was fine.


	6. Chapter 6

Fanner woke up the next morning and on balance he wished he hadn’t. He was still weak and in pain and in the middle of the woods with a stranger. But at least the stranger was offering him cheese. Fanner accepted it.

Yore instructed him to change his bandage again, so he did so. His wound hadn’t healed nearly as much as he’d expected, but maybe that was a good thing. All mages healed faster and more completely than humans and were at a far lower risk of things like infection, but Fanner’s body took that to a whole other level. Though it seemed that it struggled  _ far _ more right after he’d lost half his blood.

“Do you think you can walk?” Yore asked.

“Yes, sir,” Fanner murmured. He had decided he would respond verbally where he could. Yore hadn’t actually seemed the least bit offended by his silence, but it  _ felt _ rude to ignore him or to respond by nodding or shaking his head.

“We’ll give it a shot then, I guess, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself more. You shouldn’t be moving around at all for at least a few days, but we don’t have that luxury.”

They finished eating and Fanner carefully got to his feet. Somehow his side actually seemed to hurt  _ more _ than it had last night. His body was doing its best to heal itself despite the trying circumstances and it did  _ not _ appreciate the disruption.

After just a few steps, Yore stopped and just watched him. “Yeah, this clearly isn’t going to work. I’m going to have to carry you.”

Fanner hugged himself. He remembered grabbing Whelan’s arm and ripping the energy from his body without ever even deciding to do it. He’d killed a man so quickly and so,  _ so _ easily. What if something in him decided he was struggling too much and he needed more energy? 

Fanner didn’t yet know what kind of person Yore was or what his intentions were, but he didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t want to kill  _ anyone _ .

“Can I pick you up?” Yore asked.

Fanner hugged himself tighter and stared intently at the ground. What was he supposed to say? No? 

Yore sighed. “Look, I get that you don’t like to be touched, but it seems like that’s our only option. If there’s a really good reason for it you’re going to have to tell me so we can figure this out, but if you’re just scared because you’ve been hurt you might just have to be brave and deal with it.”

Fanner hesitated. “Can I… can I touch your hand, sir?”

“Why?” Yore asked, but he held his hand out to Fanner without waiting for an answer.

Fanner reached his finger out and tapped it against the back of Yore’s hand, ready to pull back if anything in him tried to force him to do more. Nothing happened. He brushed the back of Yore’s hand with his fingertips. Nothing. 

“Is this an energy thing?” Yore asked.

Fanner looked up at him, wide eyed and startled. How did he…?

“I know a mage who can feel energy,” Yore explained. “There are some people he doesn’t like to touch because their energy feels bad or too intense for him. Is that what’s going on with you? Is that why you’re reluctant to touch me?”

“Feel energy…?” Fanner asked. “No, sir. I’m a Companion. We can’t do that.”

“Ah, right. Being different is a flaw, and you’re not allowed to have flaws, right?”

“Well, some types of differences are  _ allowed _ , though disapproved of, but differences like  _ that _ — differences in our magic — could actually be dangerous. That can’t be tolerated.”

“Ah,” Yore said. “If you had a difference in your magic it couldn’t be tolerated, so you definitely  _ don’t _ and that’s not why you’re being weird.”

“I don’t,” Fanner murmured, but he was fairly sure Yore no longer believed that.

“Of course not,” Yore said. “So, did I pass your touch test that definitely has nothing to do with magic at all because you can’t feel energy?”

Fanner nodded meekly. If Yore wanted to believe he could feel energy, that was fine. He couldn’t, at least not in the sense that Yore seemed to be describing, but being able to feel it sounded harmless enough. At least in comparison to being able to kill people by tearing it from their bodies.

Yore knelt on one knee and put the bag he’d been carrying down on the ground. “Come on. I’ll carry you.”

Fanner moved behind Yore and carefully climbed onto his back.

“Sorry,” Yore said as he started to stand and Fanner took a sharp breath in. “Let me know if I’m hurting you.”

“I’m fine, sir,” Fanner assured him. “Will you be okay with carrying me? You seem…”

“I have bad joints,” Yore explained as he slung the bag over his shoulder. “Everything hurts all the time, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, but it’s an old injury. I just ignore it and get on with things.”

Fanner could feel it, this close to him. Scar tissue, but in a way he’d never felt it before. It was  _ everywhere _ , like fat marbled through a good steak. He had no idea what could cause something like that. “What happened, sir?”

“What happened to  _ you _ ?” Yore countered.

“I—I’m sorry, sir,” Fanner said. “I didn’t realise it was a sensitive topic. I won’t ask about it again.”

Yore let out a huff of laughter. “Ah,  _ there _ it is. No, it’s not a sensitive topic. Not really, anyway. But listen, I think we both realise we’re in a situation where there are things you’re not telling me and there are things I’m not telling you. I have good reasons for that and I’m going to trust that you do, too.”

“Can I ask where you’re taking me, sir?”

“You can ask whatever you like, but I might not answer,” Yore said. “That… I can’t answer. Not yet. If I could I would have told you already.”

“You’re not taking me back, though.”

“No, you’re right about that.”

“Can you tell me what you want from me, sir?” Fanner asked. “If you tell me what you want I can do it. Maybe. I just, I don’t really know…”

“You’re already doing everything I need you to. No need to worry.”

Not worrying.  _ That _ was an impossibility.

Each time they would stop to rest, Yore would stretch out his arms and his back, obviously experiencing some level of discomfort, but then he would pick Fanner back up and he’d walk in stoic silence for another hour or more without complaint.

The state of Fanner’s injuries was… disconcerting. Over the last year or so he had gotten used to pain and being hurt, but there was a whole new sense of horror that came with such a nasty, lingering injury. 

At the end of the day, when they finally stopped for the night, Fanner felt incredibly guilty for how tired and sore he felt. Yore had done all the work. All he had done was be carried. He tried to help Yore collect sticks for the fire, but Yore insisted he sit down and eat instead.

Yore was a nice man, or at least he seemed like one. But, of course, Fanner ought to know that what you  _ seemed _ like didn’t mean much at all. For most of his life Fanner had seemed like nothing more than a Companion who was struggling to find a buyer because he couldn’t stand still for two minutes. He’d hidden anything that would have marked him as anything else out of fear.

And then one of the younger boys had been kicked in the head by a horse and he had been forced to make a choice. It had been an easy one. He hadn’t seen any kind of future for himself, but the boy would at least have a chance of finding some kind of happiness.

They had been alone. Nobody had seen the horse kick the boy or Fanner heal him afterwards. Fanner had begged him not to tell and the boy had agreed, but he had anyway. He was well trained. Fanner hadn’t been surprised, but it had still hurt. He had been right to trust nobody.

After that, after he had saved someone’s life, he had been shut in a storage closet while Mr Burrows was contacted, and then Mr Burrows had come and taken Fanner with him and Fanner had found out that his quirks were no accident.

Well, the quirks of his magic, anyway. His lack of focus and other behavioural issues had not happened by design.

That was also when he had found out that Danya was his half brother, over a year after they had received word of his death. They shared a mother.

It shouldn’t have mattered, shouldn’t have made any difference to anything, but it really, really did. Milaine House had a limited number of breeding stock so they all knew that some of them were likely related in some way, but those details were kept from them. They weren’t allowed to have family.

Danya had always been like an older brother to him. Finding out that they actually had been brothers had been monumental.

And then he’d been sent to live with Whelan, buried deep in the countryside where nobody would question what was going on, and that was what had ultimately led him here.

Yore had started up a fire by now, but it was a cold night and the temperature had dropped faster than the fire could compensate for. Normally Fanner, like most mages, wouldn’t have been affected by the cold, but his body wasn’t about to burn through energy just to keep him warm when there was an open wound in his side.

Fanner cuddled deep in his bedroll to try to get warm, but most of his body heat had already escaped and he wasn’t warming up any time soon.

“Are you cold?” Yore asked. He didn’t look cold at all. He was sitting by the fire in his thin shirt and pants, poking it with a stick.

“Yes, sir. I don’t normally get cold, but…”

“You’re low on energy.”

Fanner nodded.

“I can help you warm up if you want.”

Fanner immediately knew where this was going. Yore was an extremely large man and that scared him, but if he wanted something from Fanner he would get it either way and it would likely be more pleasant if Fanner put himself in a position to negotiate. Resisting would turn the situation into something antagonistic.

Besides, if he played this right, this could be the best outcome. He didn’t want Yore to sell him or try to return him or… or… he didn’t even know what else might become of him. People weren’t always what they seemed, but that was all Fanner had to go on and Yore hadn’t been cruel to him so far.

Fanner nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

“Okay, here.” Yore opened his bedroll up and laid it out flat on the ground. “I don’t fit in the bedrolls even on my own, so we can lay on mine and you can open yours up so we can use it as a blanket.”

Fanner complied, shedding his cloak before climbing into the bed they’d made next to the fire with Yore. He snuggled in close against Yore’s body and Yore’s hands came up to rub warmth into Fanner’s arms.

“You’re freezing,” Yore commented.

“You’re warm,” Fanner whispered back.

“Mm. My body runs fairly hot. Cold doesn’t bother me.”

Fanner could feel his heart beating hard in his chest, caught between a mix of fear and something else. Yore could hurt him so badly, but he wasn’t. He was all warmth and firm muscles and gentle touch. Fanner waited for his hands to start to wander, but they didn’t.

So Fanner’s did instead. Down Yore’s hip and around, towards the front…

Yore’s hand pressed down over Fanner’s, stilling its motion before he could take things any further. “No.”

Fanner froze. When Yore lifted his hand, Fanner withdrew his and held it well away from Yore’s body. They were both still. Yore had stopped rubbing Fanner’s arms to warm him up.

“It’s nothing personal, but that’s not what this is about,” Yore said carefully after a few long, tense moments of silence. “We’re not going to go there, okay?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Fanner whispered.

“I’m not angry at you. You’re a Companion. I realised this might happen. I should have been clearer to you about what I did and didn’t want before I invited you to do this with me.”

Fanner didn’t respond. He couldn’t speak without crying.

If Yore didn’t want him in that way then he didn’t want him at all. As far as Yore knew, that was all the value Fanner had to offer.

Or at least that was what Fanner had assumed…

But what if Yore knew more than he was letting on? How likely was it really that just hours after he had escaped, someone had stumbled upon him in the middle of the woods across the border? People rarely came out here. It wasn’t safe.

And then Yore had disappeared for a while and he’d returned with supplies he had been given by some mysterious friends of his, but  _ nobody lived out here _ . Fanner  _ knew _ that. Yore hadn’t been gone long enough to get to the next town or even a farmhouse. Not on foot.

If he  _ really _ knew nothing at all about Fanner, he wouldn’t have turned him down. Not unless he intended to return him to his master, but he’d shown no indication he was trying to do that. At least not in the usual sense.

Fanner was nineteen years old. Nobody would have guessed that he was a virgin. If Yore intended to sell him or anything along those lines, he wouldn’t have held back.

_ Maybe _ he just wasn’t attracted to men, but Fanner knew how he looked. Soft and pretty. Androgynous enough that most men wouldn’t say no, at least as long as nobody was looking.

The only thing that made sense was that he was working with Mr Burrows. That Mr Burrows had sent Yore to find Fanner, that he had given him those supplies, and that he had ordered Yore not to have sex with Fanner.

Whelan had also not been allowed to touch Fanner in that way. There had been no intention of selling Fanner as a Companion after his healing magic was discovered, but he had still been bred as one. Breeding high quality Companions was the line of business Mr Burrows was in, and despite their circumstances he wouldn’t allow one of his own to be treated like a common whore.

But where was Yore taking him? Not back to the cottage, that was for sure.

What if Mr Burrows had concluded that healers really were too dangerous? What if he was taking him somewhere he could be dealt with safely? He had wanted to experiment with implanting one of Fanner’s organs into someone else. What if he had abandoned the idea of using Fanner as a healer and intended to fully invest in that idea instead? What if he was going to chain Fanner up and keep him alive while he cut parts out of him, over and over again?

Fanner couldn’t be sure that was the plan, but he was now certain that Yore worked for Mr Burrows and that whatever awaited him at the end of this journey would be unpleasant. 

He had to get away.


	7. Chapter 7

Yore slept with his arms around the mage, the smaller body tucked in safe and secure against his. He’d missed sharing his bed with another person, though as he’d had to make clear this was not like  _ that _ . Still, it didn’t have to be for it to be nice. There was something about the warmth and the smell of another person that made him feel soothed.

He wasn’t so sure it made the mage feel soothed, though. His heart had calmed down eventually, but it was clear that there was a lot about this situation that made him nervous.

That was fair enough. He was entirely at Yore’s mercy and he was having to tolerate Yore telling him hardly anything. Someone had badly hurt him and Yore didn’t even feel like he could promise that he wouldn’t without risking giving away too much.

It would be over soon, though, or at least Yore hoped it would. Today they would pass by the Griffin’s Roost campsite, and if anyone was there they would hopefully be able to point him towards Lucas’ whereabouts. The mage couldn’t be allowed to see the campsite, though. Not when there was still a possibility that he was acting as a spy.

Early that afternoon, Yore carefully put the mage down next to a tree stump and set the bag down next to him. “There’s something I need to take care of quickly. You sit here and have something to eat and drink and I’ll be back soon. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” the mage murmured, head down. He had started out with a bit of defiance in him, but over time he seemed only to have become more submissive.

Well, for now that was useful. Hopefully they could get this situation cleared up soon enough and be honest with one another and then the mage could stop being scared.

The campsite was far enough away that there was no risk of the mage seeing or hearing anything he shouldn’t, but not so far that there was any sense in shifting. The smell of a campfire on the air told him someone  _ was _ there.

Three men and two women were gathered around the fire, fresh fish filleted and laid out on a grill that sat over the fire just starting to cook.

The first woman who spotted him started to reach for a weapon before recognition slid over her face. “Oy! You’re one of those werewolves, aren’t ya?”

The man who had been laying out the fish to cook looked up from his work and let out a bark on laughter. “Nah, he’s  _ the _ werewolf. Yore, wasn’t it?”

“That is my name.”

“You’re like the werewolf prince, yeah?”

“Mm,” Yore said. That wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t feel like explaining their power structure and where he sat in it to a bunch of bandits. “Do you know where Lucas is by any chance?”

The man who had spoken frowned and shrugged, looking between the others.

“He’s at The Inn,” the woman who hadn’t spoken yet volunteered. “Burton got hold of some fancy alcohol and sent him up there to see what he could trade it for.”

“Ah, that’ll be popular. Think he’ll still be there by the time I get there? I’ve got someone with me, so I’ll be walking on two legs.”

“Yeah, should be. He’s always up there for at least a few days. Likes to socialise. Not sure if that means networking or fucking, though.”

“I’m not sure those are entirely separate things for him,” Yore said. “Thank you. I’d stay and chat, but I have someone waiting for me.”

“Careful if you go near the water,” the man with the fish told him. “I swear something tried to grab me when I was gutting the fish. Got out of there real quick.”

“Smart man,” Yore commented. “And thank you. I’ll be careful.”

#

Fanner hadn’t expected to be handed an opportunity like this. Part of him  _ really _ wanted to just ignore it and wait for Yore, but he knew it could be his only chance of escape. And maybe — probably — escape would mean death, but he just kept flashing back to being tied down on the table, helpless, as Whelan cut into him…

He couldn’t let that happen again, and no matter what Mr Burrows had planned Fanner highly doubted he’d abandoned the idea. If he didn’t escape it  _ would _ happen, and it would be worse because Mr Burrows would make sure it was done right next time. Part of his body  _ would _ be removed and he would have to live with the horror of that as it slowly grew back, just like his finger had. 

Fanner took a bag of shelled nuts from the bag and left everything else. He would probably regret it later, but taking things without permission felt like stealing. Though technically he was property, so running away was the biggest theft of all.

He tried not to think about that as he started walking.

Fanner tried to move quickly, but the terrain was rough and his side hurt and his body was screaming at him to just lay down and rest for a while. But he couldn’t. Yore would be back soon and if Fanner wasn’t far enough away, he would find him.

Ahead of him the ground gave way to a rocky ledge. The drop was only approximately as tall as he was — and he was not very tall — but he was afraid of what trying to drop down would do to his wound. He could try to go around, but that would slow him down.

There was a tree root growing down over the drop at the far end. It was a bit further to the ground at that end, but if he could climb down he could avoid jarring his injury.

He grasped the root firmly in his hands and dug his feet into the side of the rocky wall as he eased himself over, and then he abruptly realised he was stuck. He didn’t have enough strength to hold on with just one hand. If he let go to try to lower himself down or even pull himself back up, he would fall.

The rocky wall crumbled beneath his feet as he scrambled for a foothold and he could feel his hands starting to slip. He braced himself for what was about to happen…

And then a hand wrapped around his arm and effortlessly pulled him back up.

Yore’s eyes met Fanner’s, and he didn’t look happy. “What are you  _ doing _ ? You—”

Fanner grabbed hold of Yore’s wrist and Yore looked down, confused, as Fanner  _ pulled _ . He wasn’t trying to kill him, just render him unconscious like he’d accidentally done to the cow once, but as he drew energy from Yore he found the pool was far deeper than he had anticipated. Whelan hadn’t had anywhere near this much energy.

Confusion flooded Yore’s face and he started to pull away. Fanner pulled harder, rapidly drawing energy from him now he was no longer worried he would kill him. Yore wavered on his feet and then fell to the ground, unconscious but — Fanner made sure to check — definitely not dead.

Fanner had to get away. If Yore woke up and caught him again, he would be in  _ so _ much trouble. He had never done anything like this before, never been openly defiant, and certainly never attacked someone. At least… not on purpose. He had to keep reminding himself that he  _ had _ killed someone.

He found the shortest point in the drop and slid down as gracefully as he could. He felt a sharp jolt in his side as he hit the ground, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d been expecting. With Yore’s energy coursing through him, he felt high.

He was moving faster now, clearing enough ground that he might actually be able to get away from Yore. He’d heard stories of children who got lost in the woods accidentally simply because their parents took their eyes off them for a few minutes and they wandered off. If a child could become so difficult to find accidentally, surely he could do it on purpose.

His stomach cramped from hunger and his mouth felt dry. He found a narrow river and gulped down the clear, fresh water, and then sat next to it and ate some of the nuts he’d stolen. Despite everything else he’d done, he still felt a little guilty about the nuts. He felt guilty about a lot of things.

Fanner could feel his body healing itself. His side hurt less already. He finished the nuts and knelt next to the stream again. He would have another drink and then he would keep walking, putting more distance between himself and Yore. What he would do after that… well, he would worry about that later. He was afraid he’d lose his nerve if he gave it too much thought, and there was no going back now.

Fanner reached his hands down and just as they touched the surface of the water, something grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward, into the river.


	8. Chapter 8

Fanner kicked and thrashed, trying to fight back against whatever had pulled him into the river, but there was only water around him. He pushed towards the surface but he was dragged back under, as though the water itself was a weight pushing him down. 

He felt the water heat around him as his magic came to his defence, but whatever he was grappling with didn’t seem to care. He couldn’t  _ breathe _ . He couldn’t… he couldn’t…

Something yanked him sharply upwards and he gasped as his head breached the surface. He could feel his body being sucked back down, but the force above him was stronger. He was pulled from the water and tossed, gasping, onto the riverbank. Yore stood above him, panting and furious.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Yore demanded, but this time he wasn’t speaking to Fanner. He was looking out into the river.

A small, semi-translucent head bobbed out of the water and watched them with dispassionate eyes. Fanner couldn’t make out any parts of its body that were still beneath the water, but he wasn’t sure if it was because their appearance made them hard to see or if they simply weren’t there. “Drown the human.”

Yore held a hand out in Fanner’s direction. “Does that look like a fucking human to you?”

“Mm…” The creature tilted its head as it looked at Fanner. “Yes. Human.”

“Really? Humans have hair like that, do they?”

The creature’s head bobbled further out of the water. “Humans have hair! You can’t trick me! I know humans have hair!”

“Not like that, they don’t. Not hair that looks like actual gold made into strands.”

The head sunk back into the water until its mouth was halfway submerged. “Lemme drown you?”

“No! Stop trying to drown people! You’re not helping anyone.”

“Mm… but… lemme drown you?”

Yore took a deep breath in, let it out, and shook his head. “This is pointless.” He turned back to Fanner, who lay frozen on the ground where Yore had tossed him. “You’re wet.”

Fanner swallowed. He didn’t dare move.

“What did you do to me?”

Fanner didn’t respond.

“Okay.” Yore let out another sigh. “Get up.”

Fanner complied, careful not to do anything that looked like a sudden movement towards Yore.

“Follow me,” Yore instructed.

Fanner did as he was told. Though Yore led the way, Fanner could tell he was keeping one eye on him, making sure he didn’t get within grabbing distance.

Yore looked out through the trees, nodded to himself, and then pointed to a small boulder. “Climb up onto this and stand up.”

Fanner obeyed.

Yore pointed through the trees. “You see that thing flying around near the cliff face? The big thing?”

Fanner nodded. What was that? It looked too big, too long, too chunky to be a bird.

“That’s a griffin,” Yore told him. “If you’d have gone much further in that direction, you’d have stumbled into their territory. They’re savage things that have young year round that they’ll kill to defend without hesitation. And then they will eat you. Do you understand?”

Fanner nodded again.

“You’ve been safe out here because you’ve been with me and I know what I’m doing. If you go off on your own, you will  _ die _ . Some things might spare you because you’re not human, but there are plenty that don’t know or just don’t care. I understand that I’ve given you no reason to trust me, but if you try to make it on your own you. Will.  _ Die _ .”

Fanner dropped his head, nodding.

“What did you do to me?” Yore asked again.

Fanner hesitated. He lifted his head. “What  _ are _ you?”

Yore stared back at him for a long, tense moment. “What do you think I am?”

Fanner looked away. The amount of energy he’d had, the way he’d talked to that thing in the water, his strange, amber eyes and unusual size… “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m not so sure I know quite what you are anymore either, so I guess we’re even.” Yore stared out at the griffins and let out a sigh. “Come on. I left the bag behind and I’m not about to leave you alone again to go get it. I’m not carrying you anymore either, so I hope you’re prepared to walk.”

Fanner kept his head down and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Yore made Fanner walk ahead of him, as though he were dangerous. He supposed he was, but he didn’t  _ feel _ like he was. He was so used to being the one following that it felt uncomfortable to have someone walk behind him.

Fanner was fairly sure Yore wasn’t human. Fanner had wondered if  _ maybe _ he just had so much energy because he was such a large man, but there was no way. The difference between how much energy Fanner had taken from Whelan to kill him and how much he’d taken from Yore just to briefly knock him out was massive.

And then there was the way he’d talked to that thing in the water. It felt like he’d had that conversation before. Like its inability to correctly identify a human was a personal and ongoing annoyance.

If he truly wasn’t human, that changed everything. It would mean that it wasn’t so strange at all that he was out here, that he might have friends close by that Fanner hadn’t been aware of. 

And he’d turned Fanner down because… well, Fanner still wasn’t sure about that one. Maybe Yore just really didn’t find him attractive after all. Looks were the one thing Fanner did have, or at least he’d thought so.

But none of that mattered now because Yore was making it  _ very _ clear that he wasn’t going to let Fanner within touching distance of him again. It was reasonable, but it still hurt. He wanted to apologise, to explain himself, but there were too many other things all tangled up in it that he didn’t dare speak about.

No matter how this went, no matter who Yore was and what he had planned, there were certain things about himself that Fanner didn’t intend to tell  _ anyone _ .

He didn’t want to be a healer anymore. It was too dangerous. He’d spent most of his life as a Companion, and though he’d been bad at it at least he hadn’t killed anyone.

He would go back to that, if he was given the opportunity, or otherwise just… be nothing at all. Like any Companion he wanted attention and affection heaped on him, wanted to be special to someone, but unlike other Companions he didn’t  _ need _ it. He could keep himself balanced. Nobody had ever wanted him and that was unlikely to change now, so perhaps it was time to accept that he would always be alone.


	9. Chapter 9

Yore had expected that when he caught up with the mage he would find he was a different person, that now that he had made a move against Yore his mask would have fallen and his true self would be revealed.

Mostly the mage just seemed sad and resigned and extremely submissive. Was that an act that he’d thrown back on now that he had been caught, or was that how he truly was and the attack an act of desperation?

Either way, Yore wasn’t about to let his guard down and start underestimating him again. With any luck, he would find Lucas and they could clear this whole situation up by the end of tomorrow.

Making it back to the bag was far less of a struggle than Yore had anticipated. The mage seemed steadier on his feet now, but Yore didn’t think it was because he’d been faking before. He couldn’t possibly be  _ that _ good of an actor. Besides, the cut on his side had more than justified it.

“I’m going to start a fire,” Yore told him. “Give me your clothes so that I can lay them out to dry, change your bandages, and then get into your bedroll before you get too cold.”

Though, speaking of getting cold, the mage seemed to be doing fine considering he was soaking wet and the temperature was dropping with the sun. He wasn’t shivering. He was hunching in on himself and hugging himself a lot, but Yore was fairly sure that was for other reasons.

The mage stripped out of his cloak and then hesitated as he held it in his arms. He took an uncertain step towards Yore and then changed his mind and placed it down on the tree stump. Yore gave him a nod of approval.

The mage finished piling his clothes on the stump and then stood, naked, and started unwrapping the bandages.

He was a handsome young man. Werewolves were all so large and solidly built. Not even their women or children possessed a build as lithe or features as pretty as this mage. The mage noticed Yore watching him, pressed his lips down against a smile, and turned so that Yore could see the rest of him.

Yore looked away. Werewolves weren’t at all self conscious about nudity and in Yore’s experience neither were Companions, but Yore had been  _ looking _ . He didn’t want to be disrespectful or create any confusion about his expectations.

When the mage had finished taking the bandage off Yore did look again, though. The cut was… not there. In its place was fresh, pink scar tissue. It hadn’t been anywhere near that far towards healing when Yore had checked it that morning.

“You took energy from me, didn’t you?” Yore asked. “That’s how you knocked me unconscious.”

The mage kept his head down. He stroked his fingers over the scar tissue on his side and didn’t respond.

“Should I be concerned about that? I feel tired but otherwise fine.”

The mage looked up and met Yore’s eyes. “I wouldn’t  _ hurt _ you,” he insisted, voice shaking as he spoke.

“Why not? You seem to have decided I’m the enemy, and that’s not unreasonable. I haven’t done anything to prove otherwise.”

“I don’t want to hurt  _ anyone _ ,” the slave whispered.

“Neither do I, but that doesn’t mean I won’t if it means saving myself or someone I care about.”

“No, I  _ don’t want to _ ,” the mage said, voice wavering. “I don’t think you’re the enemy anymore, anyway. Or at least... I don’t know.”

“Hopefully we can get this all sorted out by tomorrow, but until then things might be a little rougher. I’m going to have to start treating you with more respect.”

“Respect?”

“Respect in the sense that you treat a—” Yore racked his brain for a dangerous creature the mage might actually be familiar with. “A bull? They can be aggressive towards unfamiliar people who go into their fields, right?”

Yore didn’t know much about livestock so he genuinely wasn’t sure, but the mage nodded.

“Right. So it’s respectful to acknowledge that danger and give the bull space. Going up and trying to pet it would be disrespecting the animal. Likewise, I’m not keeping my distance from you to be mean or because I’m angry. I’m respecting you as someone who is capable of defending himself and who might see me as someone he needs to defend himself from.”

The mage was hugging himself. He looked like he might cry. “I’m  _ sorry _ .”

“Like I said, I’m not angry.”

“I don’t want to be dangerous.”

“Get in your bedroll before you get cold.”

The mage looked down at the scar tissue on his side which clearly no longer needed to be bandaged, hesitated, then quickly reached for his bedroll. “Yes, I— sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Yore said as the mage climbed into his bedroll and snuggled down. “I just can’t cuddle with you tonight, so I don’t want you getting cold.”

“Sometimes—” the mage started to say and then abruptly fell silent.

“Mm?” Yore prompted.

“I just, um— sometimes I get distracted and forget what I was supposed to be doing. I don’t mean to not follow instructions— I mean, I did earlier, when I ran away, I’m not pretending that was an accident, but— but sometimes when I’m supposed to be doing something, even when it’s really simple, I just— I don’t mean to, but I lose focus and I get distracted.”

Yore poked a stick into the fire. “You’re here, and you’re with me, but you’re not  _ my _ slave, right? You obey me because you’re scared of me, or maybe because you think I can help you, but not because you’re under any obligation to.”

“I— I suppose so.”

“Right, so I’m not going to hold you up to any sort of standards of perfection. You’re not my property, we’re just working together to resolve this situation.”

“I don’t think I know how to be anything else.”

“I figured, which was why I was giving you instructions to follow in the first place. You didn’t seem to be very confident in figuring out what to do on your own.”

“Do you want me to be, sir?”

“With any luck we can get this sorted tomorrow and then we’ll be able to talk about things properly. For now, try not to worry about it too much.”

The mage hugged the bedroll around himself and nodded. “Yes, sir.”


	10. Chapter 10

Fanner was fairly certain Yore didn’t sleep at all that night. He was sitting with his back against a tree when Fanner went to sleep, he was still there when Fanner woke in the night to urinate, and when Fanner woke up in the morning he was cleaning up their little campsite and making sure the fire was properly out.

He must have been tired, especially after Fanner had taken all that energy from him, but he didn’t let it show.

He tossed fanner a bag of dried dates. “Are you up for walking today?”

Fanner nodded. “I’ll do my best to keep up, sir.”

“Good,” Yore said as he twisted his torso one way and then the other, stretching out his back.

“Does it hurt?”

“My back?”

Fanner nodded.

“A lot of things hurt, but yeah. My back in particular cramps up easily. It’s annoying.”

“Because you got hurt?”

“Because I got hurt,” Yore confirmed. “I should have died, though, so I try to be grateful for what I have instead of dwelling on what I’ve lost.”

Fanner dropped his head and chewed his lip. He could probably help Yore if he wanted to. No, he definitely could. Scar tissue was difficult and slow to work with, but Fanner knew how. He  _ could _ do it.

But he wouldn’t, because no matter who or what Yore was, how could he trust him with that? How could he trust  _ anyone _ with it? They would have to care about him more than they cared about what he could do or else things would be bad again, and nobody ever would. He was pretty and that was it. That had never been enough for anyone before and he doubted that would change now.

“How’s your side feeling?” Yore asked.

Fanner looked down at his side. The scar tissue looked old now. “I think it’s mostly healed. The skin feels tight when I move, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“I’ve never seen a mage heal anywhere near that fast.”

“Well, I— I did take energy from you. You were right.” Fanner hadn’t wanted to admit that, but Yore already knew. Maybe he could be diverted from thinking too much about why Fanner had healed so quickly, though.

“Mm, I thought so.”

“You have a lot of energy, so I guess…” Fanner gestured at his side.

“It helped you heal faster?”

Fanner nodded. It had, technically, though not quite in the sense that he was implying. He undeniably had healed more quickly after he’d taken it than before, though.

“Why didn’t you take energy from me earlier? I don’t know if I would have agreed to let you, but I doubt I would have even noticed if you’d done it when I was sleeping. I didn’t even realise you were doing something until I started to feel light headed.”

Honestly, that hadn’t even occurred to Fanner, but if it had he still wouldn’t have done it. “I don’t like to do it at all. I only did it because I thought it was my only option.”

“Hm. That’s fair.”

“I—I’m sorry, though. Really. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“If someone was making me go with them and wouldn’t even tell me where they were taking me, I guess I’d’ve done the same. I can’t really blame you for it.”

“Yes, but you’re…”

Yore smiled and lifted his eyebrows, waiting.

“Well, I don’t know, but you’re not a slave. Obeying people without question is what I was bred and raised for.”

“Ah,” Yore said. “You know, I can’t relate to being a slave. I don’t know what that’s like. But wanting to meet people’s expectations, having a role you were born into that you’re trying to perform… I get that.”

“I suppose there are always expectations. For everyone.”

“Very true. But sometimes you have to defy those expectations. It’s not easy and often it makes people angry, but you have to decide certain things for yourself.”

Fanner frowned. “Well… yes, I suppose that’s how it is when you’re not a slave, sir. Slaves should meet expectations and— and make people happy, not angry.”

Yore inclined his head in acknowledgement. “That’s fair. You try to forge your own path as a slave and you get punished and hurt and rejected. When it comes to defiance, there’s no road for you to walk down.”

Fanner dropped his head. His throat ached. “Mm.”

“That’s why you walked off into the woods, isn’t it?”

Fanner kept his head down and gave it a sharp shake. “I’m not— that’s not who I am. I didn’t want any of this, I just— it just  _ happened _ .”

“Did running away from and fighting me  _ just happen _ as well?”

Fanner shut his eyes. “I regret that.”

“What I see is a man who does what he needs to. I respect that. Even if you’ve made mistakes, at least they’re yours.”

Fanner swallowed thickly and didn’t respond.

Yore kicked the ashes of the fire to make sure it was properly out. “Why does that upset you?”

Fanner shrugged. He was hugging himself. “I think— I think if that’s what you like in a person, you’ll be very disappointed if you really get to know me, sir. If I could only be safe I could happily keep my head down and do what I was told for the rest of my life.”

“But many would have kept doing that even if they weren’t safe.”

Fanner’s eyes felt wet. “But I didn’t.”

“But you didn’t.”

“We’re supposed to.”

“I know.” Yore finished packing the bag and did the strap up. “Listen, I’m really glad you’re talking to me like this, but there are things I want to say that I don’t feel like I can until we’ve resolved this situation. I’d like to put this conversation on hold and pick it up again when we can  _ really _ talk, okay?”

Fanner nodded and rubbed tears away from his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me sir, you know.”

“I got the feeling you didn’t really care either way, but…” Fanner shrugged.

“Well, whatever makes you the most comfortable,” Yore said. “Ready to go?”

Fanner nodded and pushed himself to his feet. “Yes, sir.”


	11. Chapter 11

It was late afternoon before Yore spotted the peaks of the Farntara Mountains. The mage’s shorter stride had slowed them a bit, but not as much as Yore had been expecting. Now that he was no longer injured, he had a great deal of tenacity. He walked without complaint, hour after hour, and he didn’t once ask for an extra break.

That was typically true of most slaves but not, in Yore’s experience, expensive Companions. They were trained to obey without complaint, but they were also usually very much not used to those kinds of physical demands being placed on them.

Yore stopped walking and frowned as he looked out at the mountains and then back at the mage. He had been thinking all day about how he was going to do this, and the only way he’d come up with was one he hated very much.

“We have a problem,” Yore said.

The mage already looked scared. “Yes, sir?”

“I can’t leave you on your own because you might run away and get into trouble again, but I also can’t take you where I’m going. Not yet.”

The mage nodded along as he listened.

Yore sighed. “I want to tie you to a tree. And blindfold you. It wouldn’t be for long — maybe half an hour. I just need to go and get a friend of mine.”

The mage was silent for a long moment. “You want to tie me up?”

“Yes.”

“With... with, um. Do you have rope, or...?”

“I have a shirt and the know how to turn it into something resembling rope.”

The mage didn’t say anything. He was staring at the ground.

“Is this not going to be okay?”

The mage shook his head. “No— I mean, I— It will be fine, sir. I ran away last time. You can’t know that I won’t do it again.”

“Thank you for being understanding,” Yore said as he started taking his shirt off. “I wouldn’t do this if you really had a problem with it, but I’m not sure how else I could resolve this situation.”

“I know,” the slave murmured, his eyes flicking over Yore’s bare chest. 

Yore cut his shirt into strips and then tied and braided them together until he had something resembling a rope. Not a very long one, but he could make it work.

“Here, come and sit against this tree,” Yore said, pointing to a small tree of about the same thickness as his arm. “I don’t have enough rope to tie you around your chest, so I’ll tie your wrists behind your back around the tree. Hopefully the tree’s small enough that the angle won’t be too uncomfortable in the time I’m gone.”

The slave sat down against the tree and obediently put his hands together behind his back. This didn’t feel right, but Yore didn’t know what else he could do at this point.

“I don’t  _ think _ you’re going to try to grab me again, but fair warning: I’m much stronger and much faster than you. You were only able to get me last time because I didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. Unless you can do what you did in a split second, it’s not going to work.”

“I won’t,” the mage said. “I  _ promise _ I won’t. You don’t have to be scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Yore said as he began tying the mage’s wrists together. “I’m respectful of you.”

Though, what he was doing just then didn’t  _ feel _ very respectful. It felt awful and wrong. The mage dropped his head and stayed silent and still.

“Thank you,” Yore murmured when he was done. “I need to blindfold you now.”

The mage gave a minute nod of his head.

Yore folded the piece of his shirt he’d set aside a few times until it was thick enough to fully block the mage’s vision, and then he tied it around his head so that it covered his eyes.

“How’s that? Are the ropes too tight?”

“It’s fine,” the mage whispered, but Yore was close enough to hear the hammering of his heart and he wasn’t so sure it was.

Yore sighed as he stood. He  _ had _ to do this. There was no other option that wouldn’t put anyone at risk. “I promise you’ll be safe here and I’ll be back soon, and then hopefully we can get some things sorted out.”

The mage nodded.

“Okay, I won’t drag this out. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Yore didn’t bother walking very far away before shifting this time. Just far enough that the mage wouldn’t hear the sound of him taking off the rest of his clothes and sprinting off on four legs.

He didn’t bring his clothes with him. He would move faster without them and he could get clean ones at The Inn.

Yore preferred being on four legs these days. His body still ached, but the structure of a wolf distributed his weight more evenly and put less pressure on his back. He played it tough and pretended that it didn’t matter, but the constant pain wore on him. Carrying the mage for so long, as light as he was, had made the whole situation flare up even more.

If everything turned out fine with the mage, he would ask Hamish for a massage when he dropped him off. He always felt a little guilty for asking because he knew it got Hamish wanting things he could no longer deliver. Hamish had stopped asking, but Yore could smell his desire.

But it was Hamish, so Yore didn’t feel  _ too _ bad. He could always find someone — or multiple someones — to take care of his needs. Though Yore had never given a reason for turning him down, he was fairly sure Hamish had guessed what the issue was by now.

The Inn stood tall, nestled in the embrace of the mountainside. It was a large, sturdy structure built from stone from the mountain and wood from the forest around it. Yore never failed to feel fond at the sight of it.

Though it stood on dwarven land, Yore had partial ownership of it. His people had helped to build it. Lucas also shared part ownership of it. He had helped source some of the harder to come by materials.

There was a dwarf cleaning the windows outside, and she gave Yore a nod of acknowledgement as she held open the door for him. He nodded back and entered The Inn on four legs.

It wasn’t yet night, so The Inn wasn’t too busy. There were several dwarfs getting an early start on drinking alongside a sprite around half the size of a normal person with purple wings that glittered even where the light didn’t hit them.

A strange creature sat at a back table. It had grey skin and was completely naked, but it seemed to be lacking in genitals or even a rectum to cover. Also, eyes. It didn’t have them, either. Or a nose. It did have a mouth, though, and it was slowly emptying an entire jug of beer into it.

And there was Lucas, sitting on a stool at the bar. Yore approached him and prodded his thigh with his nose to get his attention.

Lucas looked down and his face immediately lit up. “Yore! I wasn’t expecting you, buddy. What’s up?”

Yore enjoyed the fingers Lucas was scratching against his ear for a moment and then tilted his head towards the stairs.

Lucas drained his cup and stood. “Okay, let’s go.”

Yore followed Lucas up the stairs and into the room they shared ownership of. Once the door was shut, he began the painful process of shifting back into human form.

Lucas sighed and shook his head. “Doing that in front of me is such a tease.”

Yore straightened up onto two legs and stretched out his back. “You don’t have to watch.”

“Don’t I, though?” Lucas asked as Yore went to get clean clothes from the wardrobe in the corner. “I get the feeling this isn’t a social visit. What’s up?”

“I found a Companion in the woods.”

Lucas’ eyebrows lifted. “Around here?”

“No, back…” Yore struggled to come up with a landmark Lucas would be familiar with in the area he’d found the mage and failed. There wasn’t much out there. “Well, a few days walk on two feet to the West, anyway. He won’t tell me anything about how he came to be there and I don’t feel safe telling him anything until I know he doesn’t have any tracking chips or anything in him. Please tell me you have the device with you.”

“Of course, always,” Lucas said. “We only have a few. Lynna would  _ kill _ me if I didn’t take the responsibility seriously.”

“And rightly so,” Yore said. “Okay, grab it and let’s get walking. I left him tied to a tree, so I don’t want to leave him waiting for too long.”

“You tied a  _ Companion _ to a tree?”

“Last time I left him alone he ran away, and then when I caught up with him he grabbed me and knocked me unconscious somehow by pulling energy out of me, so there’s a  _ bit _ more going on here.”

Lucas grabbed his jacket and followed Yore out of the room. “Wait, he pulled energy out of you? Companions can’t do that. I don’t think  _ any _ mages can, at least not that I’ve ever heard of. I can’t even take energy from you passively.”

“I know all of that, believe me.” Yore gave Eltran, who was working the bar, a nod on his way past. “He admitted to doing it, though, and I can’t think of any other explanation for what happened.”

“May explain why he was out there.”

“It may,” Yore agreed. “I’m not sure how, but I’d bet money it’s not unrelated.”

#

Fanner had been determined to do as he was told, to just sit and wait and endure the situation. Yore would be back soon. This wasn’t so bad.

He fidgeted his legs just to remind himself that he wasn’t  _ completely _ restrained, but it wasn’t enough. His hands were tied. He couldn’t move. His breathing came fast and panicked as he tugged against the ropes binding his wrists. Logic had vanished. He was sure someone was going to come and hurt him and there was nothing he could do because  _ he couldn’t move _ .

And then, suddenly, his wrists fell free as the rope snapped.

For a moment Fanner was just relieved, and then fresh terror filled him as he caught the smell of burning fabric. He brought his wrists up in front of him and felt the loose end where the rope had snapped. It was still warm to the touch.

What was he going to do? Yore was going to think he did this on purpose, and even if he didn’t this was yet another dangerous power Fanner was not supposed to have. The fact that it was out of his control only made it worse.


	12. Chapter 12

Yore placed a hand on Lucas’ chest to halt him as they approached the mage. He was still blindfolded, but his hands weren’t bound behind the tree anymore. He was hunched forward, head down, hugging himself. Yore didn’t know whether to approach the situation with caution or concern.

Yore took another step forward and the mage lifted his head.

“It’s me,” Yore said. “Keep the blindfold on.”

The mage nodded.

“What happened?”

The mage held up the rope and Yore took a few steps closer to get a better view of it. Had it been burned through?

“I’m sorry,” the mage whispered. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

“This is fucked up,” Lucas commented, and the mage’s head jerked in his direction.

“It’s okay,” Yore reassured the mage. “I have a friend here with me, but he won’t hurt you. Did you burn the rope?”

The mage hesitated and then nodded. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Did you get scared?”

The mage nodded again.

“Wow, Yore, who would have thought, a Companion who has trauma related to being tied up,” Lucas said as he approached the mage. “Amazing. Never would have guessed.”

“Oh, shut up,” Yore told him. “He’s an expensive Companion. Getting tied up isn’t exactly something they typically go through.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of feeling like this particular situation isn’t quite as straightforward as that.”

“Me either. I’m just saying, there’s no reason him being a Companion should have led me to believe he had rope related trauma.”

“And yet when you told me you’d done this, I knew it was a bad idea.” Lucas upstrapped the device from his belt and approached the mage. “Hi. What’s your name?”

“He hasn’t even told me that yet,” Yore said.

“Well, I wasn’t planning on giving him my name yet either, so I guess that’s fine. We can do introductions afterwards, I just thought it would be easier to give him instructions when he was blindfolded if I could address him by name.” Lucas clicked his fingers. “Actually, yes. That’s still a good idea. Until we find out your real name I will call you Bob. Is that okay, Bob?”

The mage nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Uh, no, ergh. Don’t sir me. I hate that.”

The mage dropped his head and hunched his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m also banning apologies.”

The mage pressed his lips together. He was silent.

“Okay. Can you stand up for me please, Bob?”

The mage obeyed.

“Good. Thank you. Now lift your arms up and hold them away from your sides. Good. Now stay like that. Just stand still.”

The mage complied, and Lucas switched the device on. He passed it over the mage’s wrists first, and then when there was no telltale beep he tried his back and then began slowly passing the device over the rest of the mage’s body.

The mage started out standing extremely still, but as the seconds passed he started to shift his feet and then he dropped his hands and started picking at the rope still wrapped around his wrist.

Lucas tapped him on the arm with the device. “Arms up.”

“Sor—” the mage started to say, and then abruptly fell silent as he brought his arms back up.

Lucas resumed slowly moving the device over the mage’s body, but just a couple of minutes later the mage scratched the back of his neck and then just left his hand there instead of holding his arm back out. Lucas didn’t bother correcting him this time.

“Okay,” Lucas said finally, and the mage startled and lifted his arm back up again. Lucas gently pressed both the mage’s arms back down. “You can relax now.”

“Nothing?” Yore asked.

Lucas shook his head. “Did he have any injuries when you found him? Any cuts on his wrists?”

“Not on his wrists. He had a nasty gash on his side, but it pretty much healed after he took that energy from me.”

The mage pressed his lips together as his head dropped.

“Huh. No other injuries?”

“There were some cuts on his back, actually. Right at the centre next to his spine. I didn’t give it much thought because he’s a Companion, but do you think…?”

Lucas nodded. “I’d say that’s where his chip was. Either this isn’t his first escape attempt or whoever owned him knew he was more than just a Companion. Hey, Bob. You remove that chip yourself, or did someone else do it for you?”

The mage kept his head down and didn’t answer.

“From the look of the cuts I’d say he did it himself,” Yore contributed. “Which is a little impressive, actually. The whole idea is that they’re not supposed to be able to do that.”

“Well, he did and he has no chip, which I guess means…” Lucas turned to the mage. “Bob, would you like to take that blindfold off now?”

The mage hesitated. “I can take it off?”

“Yes, you can take it off now,” Yore confirmed.

The slave complied, and then startled backwards at the sight of Lucas. “You’re— you’re a  _ Companion _ ?”

“Born but not so much raised,” Lucas said. “My name is Lucas. Will you tell me your name now?”

The mage looked between Lucas and Yore. He just looked confused.

“Okay, how about this,” Lucas said. “Yore is a werewolf.”

Yore slapped a hand over his face. “Really, Lucas?”

“What? You weren’t going to tell him?”

“No, that’s just… the sort of thing you ease into.”

“How do you  _ ease into _ telling someone you’re a fucking werewolf?”

Yore shook his head and turned his attention back to the mage. “Anyway, that’s a thing. How do you feel about that? About all of this?”

“You’re really a werewolf?” the mage asked. “You’re not tricking me?”

Lucas waved a hand in Yore’s direction. “Do the thing.”

“Really?” Yore asked.

“Yes! He’s too polite to ask, but that sort of thing does kind of demand proof.”

“You just want to look at my dick again,” Yore grumbled, but he was already pulling his shirt off.

“Nah. Flaccid dicks don’t really do much for me, actually. Now, your ass on the other hand…”

“You can keep both of your hands to yourself,” Yore said, but he was smiling. He didn’t actually mind Lucas’ attention. Hell, if he’d still had a fully functional body he probably would have reciprocated it.

Lucas laughed, but he wasn’t actually looking as Yore took off the rest of his clothes.

Yore let out a long sigh. Now the unpleasant part, for the third time in the last hour. Yore got down onto all fours and started to shift.

Besides being painful it also felt  _ difficult _ , like it required great effort, though once started the whole process would be much harder to halt than continue. Every muscle strained, every joint twisted. Yore lifted his large, furry head and looked at the mage.

The mage looked a little afraid. That was always expected from someone who hadn’t seen a werewolf before. They were far from the most creepy thing that lived out here, but they were quite large and he’d been told they had a predatory intensity to their gaze.

“So, what do you think?” Lucas asked, rubbing a hand over Yore’s ears. “Do you want to pet him? His fur’s softer than you’d think, just like his heart.”

The mage hesitated. “Is he… is his mind the same? Is he the same person?”

“Yes, exactly the same. He won’t bite you or anything.”

The mage folded his arms over his chest, hugging himself. “Then I shouldn’t touch him. He wouldn’t want me to.”

“He’s a little different about what he is and isn’t okay with when he’s in this form.”

“Well— well maybe in that sense it would be okay, but he doesn’t want me to touch him anymore anyway. Because of what I did. He doesn’t trust me.”

“Yeah, he did tell me about that. What’s the story there?”

The mage shrugged. “It’s just… something I can do.”

“Seems handy.”

The mage was still hugging himself. His hands bunched in the fabric of his sleeves. “It’s not. I don’t ever want to do it again. If I’d just been good and trusted Yore everything would have been fine, but I tried to run away and I attacked Yore and now he’s never going to trust me again and everyone will think I’m dangerous.”

Yore pushed past Lucas and approached the mage, giving his arm a gentle nuzzle with his nose. The mage was drawing in fast, uneven breaths.

“There, see?” Lucas said. “Listen, all of this distrust, all the secrets, it was because he was worried you might have been here to spy on us but that’s clearly not the case. And I think whatever you were worried about has now proven to also not be the case.”

The mage unfolded his arms and reached out a hand to tentatively brush Yore’s ear. Yore dipped his head and welcomed the touch.

“Do you think you could tell us your name, then? I’ll admit, Bob doesn’t really suit you.”

The mage hesitated for a long moment. He ghosted his hand over the top of Yore’s head and Yore shut his eyes and pressed up into the touch.

“O—okay,” the mage said finally. “My name is Fanner.”

Yore’s eyes flew open and he turned to look at Lucas. From his wide eyes and half open mouth, Yore was guessing he wasn’t the only one who recognised that name. But was this really the Fanner they’d been told about? Was this really Danya’s friend, who they had been trying to find for almost a year now?

He looked around the right age and he fit Danya’s description. Danya had always stressed how attractive Fanner was, but that he’d had a hard time finding a master because couldn’t stay focused and stand still. Hadn’t this Fanner said something similar? That he had difficulty with that sort of thing?

“If you don’t mind me asking, Fanner… which house were you raised in?”

Fanner had stopped petting Yore and was hugging himself again, looking between the two of them. “Why? And why did you look at one another like that when I said my name?”

“It’s nothing bad,” Lucas assured him. “We just might know a friend of yours. Or not. I’m not the only Lucas out there and I’m sure you’re not the only Fanner.”

“Is it Duran? I haven’t seen him in over a year now…”

“No, although now that you mention it you did talk to Duran, didn’t you, Yore?”

Yore had been putting it off, but it was time to shift back. He forced his body through the agonising process again. His joints were going to be so angry at him.

“Yes,” Yore said when he finally stood on two feet again. “He’s doing well. He’s living full time with his master now.”

“I miss him,” Fanner confessed. “I don’t know who else you could mean, though. He’s the only person I would call a friend.”

Yore and Lucas exchanged a look and Yore shook his head. Finding out Danya was alive would be an emotional moment for Fanner. As much as Yore wanted to be fully honest with him, it would be better if Danya could be there with him while he went through it. 

“You’re going to have questions that I think this friend of yours will do a better job answering than either of us can. We’ll answer other questions now that we know you’re not chipped, but I think that one’s better off waiting for later.”

“Okay,” Fanner agreed. “Will you tell me where you’re taking me? What you want me for?”

“There are other mages who have run away or been liberated,” Yore said as he started putting his pants back on. “Quite a few of them. We’re taking you to be with them. And… we don’t really want you  _ for _ anything. You needed help, so we’re providing it.”

“There are others who have escaped?”

Yore inclined his head. “There are.”

“I was told it was impossible to escape. That we always got caught.”

“Yeah, it’s weird how the people who owned you would lie to you about that,” Lucas commented. “Can’t imagine why.”

Fanner ducked his head and hunched his shoulders. “I suppose some things I believe to be true… aren’t true.”

“Don’t feel bad about that,” Yore told him. “That’s something every single escaped slave goes through. The fact that you’re already accepting that instead of pushing back and denying puts you ahead of most.”

“Especially for a Companion,” Lucas added. “I fucking hate dealing with Companions.”

“Lucas,” Yore scolded.

“What? You know what I mean and he probably does too. Their training is impenetrable. They’re very hard to get through to.”

“No, I— I agree,” Fanner said. “Of course something that makes for a good slave won’t make for a good escaped slave. That’s only logical.”

“Are you a good slave?” Lucas asked.

Fanner shook his head. “I’m not a good anything. But I— I’ll try to be useful. I know I don’t have much to offer but a pretty face, but, um…”

“Fanner, you knocked me clean out,” Yore pointed out. “That’s a lot more than a pretty face.”

“No,” Fanner said, taking a physical step backwards as he shook his head. “I don’t want to do that. Please. I don’t want—”

“Okay, okay,” Yore said before he could get too worked up. “Nobody’s going to try to make you do anything. I was just saying. There’s more to you than that.”

“I don’t want there to be,” Fanner murmured. 

“Let’s not worry about it too much for now,” Yore said. “There’s an inn nearby. Why don’t we get you some clean clothes and a hot meal?”

Fanner chewed his lip. “What if word has spread about my escape and people are looking for me and—”

“It’s not a human inn,” Lucas interrupted. “Come on. You’ll love it.”


	13. Chapter 13

As they walked through the woods, Yore and Lucas told Fanner more about the escaped slaves. They had started as a single unit of escaped Soldiers, but over the last few years they had been freeing more slaves and adding to their ranks and now they numbered in the hundreds.

But they were more than just an army. They were a community. They had rescued some slaves simply because they needed help, and over the years several children had been born into the group.

They wanted for it to be a safe place, but they couldn’t guarantee it would be. One day, the humans would gather an army and come to try to stop them once and for all.

Lucas wasn’t really part of the group, though he worked with them. He lived with human bandits who had raised him since he was very small. That explained why he acted nothing like a Companion. His appearance and behaviour were an odd juxtaposition, but it made Fanner more comfortable than if he’d behaved like a typical Companion. It was hard to trust Companions when one had so readily betrayed him after Fanner had saved his life.

That was why he wasn’t too eager to find out which of the boys from Milaine House had ended up with them. It sounded like it was someone who had mentioned him because they knew he would never be sold, but if it wasn’t Duran then it was nobody he had been close to. 

If he were honest, he hadn’t even truly trusted Duran or Danya. He’d loved them dearly, but trust them? No. They’d had their training. If they had found out what Fanner could do, who knows what they would have done. Would their love for him really have been enough to overcome everything they’d been taught? 

Yore was also not directly part of that group, though his pack lived nearby and they worked together often. He would be dropping Fanner off and then going back to his own people, and Fanner would be left to figure out where he fit in with a whole new group of people.

Not that he truly understood where he fit in with Yore yet. He had started this whole adventure working under the assumption that Yore was human and had treated him as such, but now that he knew that wasn’t the case he wasn’t quite sure how to conduct himself. He had been taught very strict rules about how to interact with humans and other mages, but werewolves had never gotten a mention.

Honestly, Fanner wasn’t even quite sure when it came to Lucas. He looked like a Companion, but he didn’t act like one. It made Fanner feel like he ought to treat him with extra respect.

They had told him they were going to an inn, that it was nearby, and that it wasn’t a human inn, but Fanner was surprised when it was just suddenly up ahead tucked in against the mountain. There were some spots where the ground had been worn clear, as though this area received frequent foot traffic, but other than that there hadn’t been much sign of civilisation.

Yore and Lucas led the way inside the inn, and they were immediately greeted by the sounds of music, laughter, and conversation. Fanner’s eyes skimmed the crowd and immediately locked on a very small woman with purple, sparkly wings. She was sitting on the edge of a table, having a conversation with the person next to her like this was all perfectly normal.

The woman with the wings may have been the most eye catching, but as Fanner looked at each of the patrons more closely he realised that most of them were at least a little unusual looking. Many of them were extremely short and stocky with thick beards. Individually he might have taken them as simply normal people, perhaps with some sort of medical condition that inhibited growth, but the sheer number of them led him to believe they probably weren’t human.

Something brushed against Fanner’s leg and he looked down, and then instinctively grabbed for Yore’s arm as he stumbled backwards. There was a… a  _ creature _ , and it was… well, not looking at him, because it had no eyes, but it had touched him and now its face was angled in his direction.

It had hairless grey skin and though it stood on all fours the shape of its body suggested it could have stood up on two. It even  _ sort of _ had hands. But not eyes. Not a nose. Only a mouth. Yore pulled Fanner back, putting himself between him and the creature.

Lucas, meanwhile, didn’t look in the least bit intimidated. He gave the creature a light smack on the head. “Leave him alone, you bully. He’s scared enough and you know it.”

The creature shook its head like a dog and made a chittering sound. Despite its appearance, it didn’t  _ seem _ aggressive.

The man tending the bar leant over the counter. He was similarly proportioned to most of the patrons. “Cookie’s not bothering you, is she?”

Yore’s eyebrows lifted. “Cookie?”

“Yeah, don’t let her scare you. She’s harmless.”

“They think it feeds off of emotion,” Lucas explained, giving the creature a shove when it tried to siddle closer to Fanner. “Fanner’s scared, so it’s drawn to him.”

“Hm,” Yore said. “He could do with some of his fear being eaten.”

“Not like that, unfortunately. It’s like how mages syphon magic from humans. Or—” His eyes cut to Fanner. “ _ Most _ mages. We don’t take anything away from them, we just absorb what they naturally release.”

Fanner leant out from behind Yore to get a closer look at the creature. “So that’s why it looks scary? To try to make people afraid of it?”

Lucas shot him a grin. “Exactly. It doesn’t even have teeth.”

“Doesn’t even have a digestive tract, so she won’t be eating anyone,” the man at the bar added.

Yore frowned. “I saw it drinking beer earlier.”

“Ah, yeah, she’s gonna throw that up later,” the man at the bar said. “But it’s all right. She knows to go outside and we don’t give her the good stuff.”

Lucas shot Yore a smile. “I dare you to touch its head.”

“Okay?” Yore reached his hand out, gave the creature two perfunctory pats on the head, and then pulled his hand back and made a face. “Eugh.”

Lucas grinned. “It reminds me of a waxed testicle. Cool, clammy, and loose skinned.”

“Thanks, you just made it worse.”

“Do you think… can I touch it?” Fanner asked.

“Seems safe enough,” Yore said.

Fanner held his hand out towards the creature like he would a dog. He didn’t want to touch it if it didn’t want to be touched. It looked a little like a dog… sort of. It also looked a little like a person. And a lot like a monster.

It shifted forward and rubbed the side of its face against Fanner’s hand, and then continued moving forward as it rubbed its shoulder and the side of its body all the way up Fanner’s arm. It… wasn’t pleasant. It felt clammy as Lucas had said and much too cool to the touch for a living thing. Fanner imagined this was how a corpse would feel after a few days of decomposition.

But it didn’t seem to be dangerous. It wasn’t even really trying to scare him, though it easily could have. Perhaps it was already getting such a banquet from him that there was no need to scare him more.

“Gross,” Lucas commented. “Anyway, Yore, how about you order us some food while I take Fanner upstairs to change into some clean clothes? He should fit into my stuff. We’re about the same size.”

Yore nodded and turned to Fanner. “You’re okay with going with him, right?”

“I— yes. I mean… to get changed,” Fanner said.

“I’ll be down here waiting. I promise.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fanner said, mumbling the last word because, well… maybe it was strange to be addressing Yore that way now. He didn’t really know. Lucas certainly didn’t seem to feel he needed to treat Yore as a superior.

Fanner followed Lucas upstairs and into a large room at the far end of the hall. It was  _ fancy _ . The wooden floors in this room had been sanded smooth and varnished, and the cerulean blanket on a large, plush bed matched the curtains and the rug on the floor. Directly across from the bed sat a fireplace and to the side there was a table with enough chairs to seat four people.

Lucas shot Fanner a smile. “Nice, huh? Yore and I share part ownership of this place, so we have this room set aside for when we or any of our friends are passing through.”

Fanner nodded. “It’s very nice.”

Lucas led the way over to a large wardrobe. “Yore would have been happy with something simpler, but I wanted something nice. I play pretend Companion sometimes so I get to go to all these fancy places, but I’ve always lived on the road, moving between temporary campsites. Even if I’m not here very often, I wanted somewhere to come back to that would make me feel the way this place does.”

“The places I’ve lived have been quite nice,” Fanner said. “Comfortable and clean. None of it has ever been mine, of course, and where I go has been at someone else’s whim.”

“Well,” Lucas said as he opened the door to the wardrobe, “Pick out anything you want. The clothes that are way too big for either of us are Yore’s, but you can take anything of mine you want and you can keep it. It can be  _ yours _ .”

“Really? But…” Fanner’s eyes skimmed the clothes hanging in the wardrobe. There were some expensive looking robes in there… “I don’t want to take anything expensive or, or anything you really like, or—”

“Take anything you want,” Lucas insisted. “Keep in mind you still have some travelling to do tomorrow and some of the robes might not be the most practical, but you’re welcome to take one to wear once you’ve settled in if you like. I know a lot of ex-Companions aren’t real comfortable in pants and shirts.”

“N—no, it’s okay. I wasn’t, but I’ve been dressing this way for a while now. It is more practical.”

Lucas nodded. “I prefer it.”

Lucas went and sat down at the table to wait and Fanner was left alone, staring into the wardrobe. Lucas had told him he could have whatever he wanted, but Fanner didn’t want to take anything expensive or that Lucas particularly liked.

Perhaps he could just decline the offer. He could clean and mend the clothes he was wearing. That was something any Companion was more than capable of. He only hadn’t been because he had been low on energy, but after taking so much from Yore and being mostly healed now he could surely spare it.

But was that what Lucas wanted from him? For him to decline the offer and let him keep all of his clothes? Fanner didn’t feel like that was the case. He felt like Lucas pitied him and wanted to do something kind for him.

Fanner didn’t deserve the pity or the generosity after all he’d done, but he couldn’t tell Lucas all of it and he wasn’t sure Lucas would condemn him for his actions if he did. These people freed slaves. It was hard to imagine they always found non-violent ways to do that. Would they blame him for killing someone else to keep them from killing him?

No. They would praise him. They would want him to do it again. They would tell him that he’d been willing to do it to save himself, so why would he not do it to save others? But he hadn’t  _ meant _ to do it at all and he didn’t  _ want _ to do it again…

“Is this too much?” Lucas asked and Fanner’s head jerked around to look at him. He was supposed to be doing something, but he had just been staring into the wardrobe for several minutes, lost in his own thoughts.

Fanner gave a sharp shake of his head. “No. Sorry. I— I get distracted sometimes. Sorry.”

Lucas nodded. “We were told that about you.”

Fanner swallowed. “I suppose that is what I was best known for.”

“Was? What are you known for now?”

“Nothing, I suppose.”

“Where have you been for the last year? From what I know there wasn’t any evidence that you’d been sold, but you weren’t at Milaine House anymore. Nobody knew where you’d ended up.”

“They realised I wasn’t a normal Companion and— and I couldn’t be legally sold. Or kept at all. But they were curious, I suppose, so they were— they were testing me. What I could do.”

“And what can you do?”

Fanner shrugged. “What I did to Yore. And then— and then I can use that energy I take, like— like I recover from injuries more quickly, so they hurt me sometimes, and…”

“Did they tie you down?”

Fanner swallowed and nodded. “While they did that. Yes.”

“Ah. Yore didn’t know about that, did he?” Lucas asked, and Fanner shook his head. “He wouldn’t have tied you up if he’d known.”

“He had to. He couldn’t trust me.”

“Well it’s over now anyway, so we don’t have to worry about what he would have done. Yore and the people he’s taking to really do just want to help you, you know? Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.”

Fanner nodded as he turned back to the wardrobe. He believed that, at least on a surface level. He didn’t think they were tricking him. He just knew what happened when people realised his ability was more valuable than he was.

He had known Mr Burrows his entire life. Mr Burrows didn’t live at Milaine House, but he’d visited frequently and personally checked in on them. He had insisted they never be beaten or punished cruelly, and even slaves who failed to sell for so long that they would never bring in a profit like Fanner and Danya were never sold off cheaply for less savoury purposes.

But, in the end, it had been Mr Burrows who had instructed a man with no surgical experience to attempt to cut out Fanner’s kidney while he was fully conscious. Any values he might have held had meant nothing when there had been something else he wanted more.

“Here,” Lucas said, and Fanner jumped when he realised he was right beside him. He offered Fanner a shirt. “These pants as well.”

“Oh, uh… thank you.”

Lucas put his foot next to Fanner’s and nodded, satisfied. “Take those leather boots in the corner there as well. They’ll serve you well. The ones you’re wearing weren’t made for this kind of terrain.”

Fanner looked down at his shoes. Lucas wasn’t wrong. The soles had started to come unstuck on both of them. They had been good shoes, just not for this.

“Thank you,” Fanner said again. “I just, I wasn’t sure…”

Lucas waved away his concern. “No, I know that was a bit much to throw at you. You were trained as a Companion. It’s hard for you to put yourself first.”

Fanner shook his head, but he didn’t say anything. If only Lucas knew just how much he was doing exactly that.


	14. Chapter 14

Yore had an entire spread of food laid out on the table in front of him and was just starting to wonder if he should go and check on Lucas and Fanner when finally they made their way down the stairs. The strange, eyeless grey creature followed them down.

“That damn thing was waiting outside the door,” Lucas told him as he pulled out a chair and sat down. “It scared Fanner again.”

“Sit down,” Yore told Fanner before his hovering started to get awkward. “I’m surprised you’re not more scared of it, Fanner. I thought you’d lived a sheltered life, at least when it came to strange beasts.”

Fanner carefully considered the chairs available to him and ultimately sat down next to Yore, across from Lucas at the four person table. “You saved me when I ran away and you showed me the gryphons so— so I thought that if it was dangerous, you would know. If something in the water that looks like a little child can try to kill me or a person can do terrible things, then maybe something that looks like a monster can be harmless.”

Yore watched as the creature crept around the room and shoved peanut shells it found on the floor into its mouth. Yore was fairly sure he also saw it eat a coin. “I’m actually just trusting everyone else on this one. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Seems completely harmless from what I’ve seen,” Lucas said. “Doesn’t have teeth. Has claws, but they seem to mostly be for climbing. It likes to scare people just by like, existing near them, but I’ve never seen it actually be threatening towards anyone.”

“What did Eltran call it? Cookie?” Yore asked.

“Oh, yeah. They call it Cookie to try to cockblock it from scaring people. It’s  _ much _ harder to be scary when your name is Cookie.”

As if hearing its name — though it had no visible ears — the creature strolled over and casually stretched out on the floor behind Fanner. The most disconcerting thing about it was that it was difficult to determine what level of intellect it had. Was it essentially an animal, or did the human-like qualities of some of its features hint to something more?

It wasn’t that Yore felt threatened by it. The thing was smaller than him and showed no signs it had the ability to do him any real harm. If he were honest, he just didn’t want to unintentionally be rude to it if it did understand him.

Lucas looked at Fanner and nodded to the food as he grabbed a chicken leg and some potatoes for himself. “Eat.”

Fanner looked over the spread in front of them. Yore had gone all out. The satyrs had been generous, but they’d underestimated how much Yore ate by quite a bit. He’d been undereating for days so that there would be enough for Fanner and now he was ready to make up for it. They had an entire roast chicken, roast beef, potatoes, soup, pastries, and an apple cobbler. 

Fanner tucked his hands in his lap and looked down. “I— I could have something else.”

“Really?” Lucas asked. “None of this looks good to you?”

“No, no!” Fanner said. “It all looks very nice.  _ Too _ nice. I don’t deserve this.”

“Someone gives me food, I eat it. I’ve never worried about whether or not I deserve it. I’m not even sure what that really means.”

“You’ve both given me so much already. Yore spent days getting me here, even though I made trouble for him, and you gave me these clothes, Lucas. I feel bad taking more when I have nothing to offer in return. Nothing you want.”

Yore wondered if that last part was a dig at him for not letting Fanner touch his dick. Fanner seemed to believe that was all he was good for. Or, at least, that it was the only thing he was good for that he wanted to be good for. He seemed to fear the part of himself that had allowed him to escape and survive this long.

But maybe that was temporary. Danya had told Yore how much he’d struggled to come to terms with the fact that his greatest assets were things that would have gotten him killed as a slave, but he’d ended up having pride in his strength.

“I can eat a lot, Fanner, but there’s no way Lucas and I can finish this between us,” Yore told Fanner. “Please, help yourself.”

Fanner still didn’t make a move towards the food. “I— I could eat whatever’s left when you’re done.”

Yore took a slow breath in and let it out. He picked up one of the pastries and placed it on the plate in front of Fanner. “Eat that. They’re good.”

“Thank you,” Fanner murmured. He took a tainty bite of the pastry and a little smile overtook his face. “It is good. Sorry. I was just being difficult, wasn’t I? That isn’t something anyone wants.”

“Yup,” Lucas confirmed.

Yore shot him a scathing look. “You’re being asked to forget everything you’ve ever been taught. It’s not easy. We understand that.”

“I was also taught not to be difficult, though. There’s no excuse.”

“That’s the great thing about not being a slave,” Lucas said. “You don’t need an excuse to be difficult.”

“That’s true,” Yore said. “Lucas here is extremely difficult.”

“I’m extremely  _ easy _ ,” Lucas said around a mouthful of chicken. “Not that you'd know.”

“No, trust me, I know.”

“Hmm.” Lucas turned to Fanner. “Could you go and ask the nice man at the bar for three of the house specials, please?”

“Oh, um, yes,” Fanner said, already getting up. “Do I, um. I don’t have any money.”

“He’ll put it on my tab,” Lucas assured him, and though Fanner still looked nervous he nodded and headed towards the bar.

Yore watched Lucas watch Fanner leave. “So, what did you want him out of earshot for?”

Lucas made sure Fanner had reached the bar and then turned back to face Yore. “He told me whoever had him before this had hurt him to test his abilities. They tied him down while they did it. That’s why he freaked out and broke the rope.”

“Makes sense,” Yore said. “What I can’t make sense of is why Fanner has all these things going on with his abilities. With Danya it was the combination of a Companion and a Soldier giving him the best of both worlds and a few little extras, but Fanner is clearly full Companion. At least if I’m understanding how the genetics works on that golden hair of his.”

“It’s a recessive gene. Both parents wouldn’t have to be full Companion, but yeah. It is the much more likely option.”

“I know it’s not unheard of for mages not to fit perfectly into whatever mold they were bred for. We’ve seen it many times before. It’s rarer with these sorts of expensive Companions, though, and they both seem to be pretty extreme examples. I can’t help feeling like there’s something more going on here than we’re aware of.”

“Oh, yeah, for sure. I get the feeling Fanner’s being  _ very _ careful about what he tells us. But that’s fine. It makes sense. We’re basically strangers to him at this point. I’m assuming that he’ll tell Danya everything once we reunite them.”

“Mm, I agree. Hopefully Danya can sort whatever’s—”

The creature on the floor suddenly pushed itself to its feet and chittered loudly. It was facing in the direction of the bar.

Fanner was at the bar, standing very still, a dwarf’s hand on his ass.

Yore and Lucas got up at the same time, but Yore’s longer stride got him to the bar first. He took hold of the dwarf’s wrist and firmly but gently removed his hand.

The dwarf looked up, shocked and confused, and then his eyes widened when Lucas came up beside them. He looked between Lucas and Fanner and in that moment they all realised what had happened. Well, except maybe Fanner, who had turned around and pressed himself back against the bar and just looked confused.

The dwarf held his hands up. “Shit, I’m sorry. I thought you were Lucas. You have pants just like those, don’t you Lucas?”

“I gave him some of my clothes,” Lucas told him.

“I really am sorry. What’s your name?”

Fanner’s gaze flicked to Yore for a moment and then he murmured, “Fanner.”

“My name’s Berron. Listen, is there any way I can make this right? I don’t want you thinking this is the kind of place people are going to be grabbing at you like that without asking. We don’t take these sorts of things lightly.”

“Oh, um…” Fanner looked to Yore for help, but Yore wasn’t sure what he wanted. “Um, no. It’s okay. I’m a Companion, so—” Fanner made a face like he wasn’t quite sure that had been the right answer.

“He’s a recently escaped slave,” Yore explained. “I think he might be struggling with the idea that he’s now in charge of who gets to touch him and how.”

“Oh…” Berron said, his expression melting into something that was more sad than anything. “I hope I didn’t make you feel like that wasn’t the case, Fanner.”

Something brushed Yore’s leg and he looked down. The creature had flattened itself against the floor and was crawling between them to be closer to Fanner.

“Ah, seems like Cookie likes you,” Berron observed. “Guess you’re feeling a lot of emotions right now.”

“I suppose so,” Fanner said. “And it’s okay, I’m not upset. I was just confused and a little startled.”

Lucas put a hand on Berron’s shoulder and turned him back towards the bar. “I’ll order the drinks we sent him to get and you can pay for them so you can stop feeling guilty, Berron. You can go back to the table with Yore, Fanner.”

Yore headed back towards the table and Fanner followed him with Cookie close at his heels.

“Are you actually okay?” Yore asked as soon as they were seated back at the table again.

Fanner nodded. “A Companion can’t be so easily upset by such things. I mean, usually we wouldn’t be touched like that by anyone but our masters, but it’s okay. It happens.”

“It shouldn’t happen. Not anywhere, but especially not here.”

Fanner was silent for a long moment. “I’m sorry that I touched you. I thought you wanted me to, but you didn’t, and that was far worse than what Berron did. And more intentional.”

“It’s okay. It didn’t upset me. You should ask first in future, but I don’t blame you for the misunderstanding. You were just scared and confused.”

“I won’t do it again.” Fanner nibbled a corner of the pastry, but he seemed distracted. “I won’t really have a master where you’re taking me, will I? Or… how does that work?”

“Of course not. You’re not a slave. Only slaves have masters.”

“Maybe…” Fanner pressed his lips together in thought. “I was never very good at being a slave, but… I am attractive, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you’re very attractive.”

Fanner nodded seriously. “So maybe I could still be useful. Maybe there will be some people who would want me for that.”

“We already have one resident whore and that’s Hamish,” Lucas said as he returned to the table clutching three cups. He placed one down in front of each of them. “But that’s more of a hobby for him. Having sex with people as a way to be useful isn’t  _ great _ .”

“I know it’s not very useful, but even for a Companion I’m not that good at much else and I don’t want to do anything with, like…” he grabbed hold of the collar of his shirt and twisted it in his hand, “energy stuff.”

“You don’t have to be useful, but I think wanting to be is a very natural drive,” Yore said. “Just remember that there’s no rush. Live your life, talk to people, and help out where you can. You’ll soon figure out what you’re good at and what you’re interested in. You’ve been forced into this very narrow box, and I’m not just talking about magic. Humans have no magic and they find all kinds of different ways to contribute and have purpose.”

Cookie rested her head on the table next to Fanner and Fanner placed a hand on the top of her head, grimacing slightly at the feeling of her clammy skin.

“Yes,” Fanner said. “I think I’d like to have purpose.”


	15. Chapter 15

Fanner was fuller than he’d ever been. He was so full it was making him sleepy, but he’d already decided he wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight. He wanted to be useful, to balance out all the harm he’d done and the burden he’d been for Yore. Maybe that was impossible, but he wanted to at least  _ try _ to do something good.

Sex wasn’t the answer. Maybe people would want to have sex with him, but sex as a service seemed to be frowned upon on this side of the border. He could think of only one other way to make himself useful.

The problem was that he had to do it secretly because this was one thing nobody could ever know about. As soon as the three of them arrived back in the room upstairs, Yore placed a hurdle in his plans.

“Okay, Fanner, you must need to be balanced by now, so you can share the bed with Lucas. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“No, it’s okay, I don’t actually ever need to be balanced,” Fanner said. “I can move energy, and that includes inside myself, so I always stay balanced. I— I should sleep on the floor.”

Which  _ also _ didn’t mesh with his plans, but he wasn’t about to volunteer Lucas for it.

“Have you ever slept on the floor before?”

“Well…” Once, when he’d been shut in that storage closet waiting for Mr Burrows. “We still have the bedrolls, don’t we? I can sleep on one of them and it won’t be any different from the last few days. You need to rest your back.”

“Just share the bed,” Lucas cut in before Yore could object. “I’ll be fine.”

Yore’s eyebrows lifted. “ _ You’re _ going to sleep on the floor?”

“First of all I’m a fucking bandit so I don’t know why that’s such a wild idea to you. Second of all… no, of course not. We’re at an inn. There are other beds. Maybe I’ll go see if Berron’s still looking for some company.”

“That works,” Yore said. “And to be clear, I was implying I thought you were too selfish to sleep on the floor, not too soft.”

“Oh, okay. That’s much less insulting and far more accurate.”

“Thank you,” Fanner told Lucas. “Will I see you again before we leave?”

“Uh huh. I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow,” Lucas said, and then, “Fuck!” as he opened the door and was confronted with Cookie. “Cookie, you’re a little shit.”

Lucas had to use his legs to block Cookie as he edged through the door so that she wouldn’t try to get into the room and then he was gone, and the door was shut, and they were alone. Yore walked over and locked the door.

“Just in case,” Yore explained. “Cookie does more or less have hands, and I don’t want to wake up to her breathing on my face.”

“Yes, me either,” Fanner agreed. Would he hurt her if he did? Would he reflexively try to pull energy from her if she startled him like that? He didn’t even know anymore.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that. He had exactly what he wanted. 

Yore took his shirt off and began stretching out his back. He always looked away from Fanner when he was doing that, as though he was trying to avoid attention, though it was impossible to ignore.

“Is it bothering you?” Fanner asked.

“Ah, well, it always does a bit,” Yore said, twisting his torso one way and then the other. “But yeah, the last few days have been rougher on it than usual.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Anyway, I’ll be fine. I’ll see if I can get a friend of mine to give me a massage when I drop you off. That’ll loosen things up a bit.”

Fanner bit the inside of his cheek to suppress a smile. He had been wondering how he was going to lead into this, and Yore had just given him the perfect opening. “Well… I could give you one now, if you’d like. We get training in massage. I’m very good at it.”

Yore hesitated. “Just so we’re on the same page here, this would  _ just _ be a massage, right? You’re not expecting it to be anything more?”

“Just a massage. You said you didn’t want anything else, so I won’t. I promise.”

Yore smiled and then made a face as he stretched his arms out in front of himself. “In that case, yes. If you really don’t mind, I would appreciate that.”

“Do you have any massage oil?”

“I’m sure Lucas has a lot of things,” Yore said as he went and sat on the edge of the bed and started going through the drawers in the bedside table. He unscrewed the lid on a bottle, sniffed the contents, then put the lid back on and put the bottle back. He tried a second bottle, nodded to himself, and then held it out to Fanner. “Here. Massage oil.”

Fanner took the bottle and sniffed it. Lavender.

Yore lay stomach down on the bed and Fanner knelt next to him. It would have been easier to straddle his ass, but that was the kind of thing they’d been taught to do for their masters only. There was a reason they’d never actually practised that move during their training.

Fanner poured some of the oil into his palm. “It’s okay if you still don’t want to answer this, but. Um. How did you get hurt?”

“Oh,” Yore said, and then, “Mm,” as Fanner spread oil across his back. “I don’t mind telling you now, it’s just… kind of complicated.”

Fanner began to gently knead Yore’s back. “I’ll try to understand. I’m smarter than I seem.”

“I don’t think you’re too stupid to get it, it’s just—” Yore yawned “—a bit of a long story.”

“We can talk about it later if you prefer. Or not at all.” Fanner was still struggling not to tack a ‘sir’ on to some of the things he said to Yore. It felt disrespectful not to. Fanner’s mind had only been programmed to deal with humans and mages, and he was still struggling to figure out how to apply this to Yore. He couldn’t exactly convince his brain that Yore was a mage, though intellectually he knew he wasn’t human either and it made more sense to treat him as an equal. Probably? He didn’t exactly know how the politics of these things worked, but Yore didn’t seem to expect anything else.

“No, you’re helping me now, so I’ll tell you now,” Yore said. “Mh. You’re good at that.”

“Thank you. Being at the House for so many years meant I got more training in such things than most.”

That was only part of the story, however. He’d always been particularly good at giving massages because he had a secret trick. He had always instinctively used his magic to relax the muscles of the person he was massaging and ease any inflammation. He had told one of the other boys about it when he was too young to know better and the boy had just seemed confused and then had tried to tell one of the humans in charge what Fanner had told him. 

Fortunately the boy’s explanation had been muddled enough that Fanner had been able to convince them that he had meant that he cleaned the surface of the person’s skin while giving them a massage. He had been reminded not to do things he hadn’t been asked to and that had been the end of it. 

After that, Fanner was more careful about what he shared with others. He did keep using his magic for massages, however. It just made his massages  _ better _ . It gave him an unfair advantage and he was doing things that weren’t asked of him which was bad, but he was so bad at most things. He needed just one thing he would be praised for.

“Mm, okay,” Yore said. “Story time before I fall asleep. I suppose this story starts with me being in the human military for several months.”

“As part of the work to free slaves?”

“Oh, no, this was before that. I just wanted to understand humans better — especially their combat abilities. Surprisingly, though, I ended up making friends with some of them.”

Fanner’s hands moved to Yore’s lower back, working at the knots in the muscle. He’d never felt anything like it. Yore was surely downplaying the pain. “I suppose they would have thought you were human. Humans treat other humans well, at least some of the time.”

“They did at the time, but— well, I’ll continue the story and you’ll see.” Yore made a sound in the back of his throat as Fanner dug his fingers in. It was hard to tell if it was from pain or pleasure, but he made no complaint so Fanner kept doing it. “Uh, so, we were out on a job, vampire stuff, and this glowing form appeared in my tent. I knew it was the fae. I’ve seen them before. It wanted me to follow it.”

“And you did?”

“And I did, which was and generally is a bad idea, by the way. They don’t understand the physical world, the difference between warning you of danger and leading you right into it. I knew that, but I was young and impulsive and I thought someone might need my help. I snuck away from my human friends and followed the fae all the way to Lainton and into the vampire infested tunnels there, even though I knew how dangerous they were because my pack lives nearby.”

“Why didn’t you ask your— your pack? Why didn’t you ask your pack for help?”

“My mother leads us and I knew if I told her I planned to go down there she would stop me. I don’t fault her for that because that would have been the correct thing to do. But anyway, I’m stronger and faster than any vampire so I thought I would go down there, dash through the tunnels, and see if there was anyone who needed help or anything in particular we should be aware of. I’d forgotten how tight the tunnels were, hadn’t realised how many vampires were down there, and I soon became overwhelmed. I’d kill one and there would be two more behind it. They exhausted me and chained me up in an old train.”

Fanner drew in a deep, shaky breath. The idea of being kept chained up all of the time by evil beings that wanted to hurt you… “How long were you there for?”

“A few months.”

“I’m sorry. That sounds awful. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

“It was quite bad, yes.”

“That’s what the scars on your neck are from?”

“Yes.”

“And… and the rest? Everything hurting? Did they do that as well somehow?”

“It’s related, but not exactly. After those few months of being down there, someone found me. A friend of my human friends. A mage, actually.”

“A friend wouldn't be what they’d be to your human friends, surely, if they were a mage.”

“It turns out I choose my friends wisely, so that’s exactly what they were to him. And more than that, for one of them. That mage was the mage you know, by the way, but don’t worry about that. This is already complicated enough.”

“I— yes. I’m not sure I’m quite following. Why were they there?”

“On a military job to clear the tunnels, ostensibly, but really to find another mage who had been taken by the vampires. Once I was free I went home and convinced my pack to help them find her. I was in no condition to help in any physical way, but I went back anyway just to be there and help how I could. And, of course, it was our tunnel they came bursting out of with that mage we were looking for.”

“Did you save her?” Fanner asked, then realised he’d been so focussed on the story that he’d stopped massaging at some point. He started again.

“Mm,” Yore said. “I had been kept in wolf form all those months, and that does strange things to us. Shifting back into human form was safe enough to do, but after that my body needed a break to readjust. But that mage… I couldn’t save her unless I shifted. So that’s what I did, and I did save her. At that point, however, the damage had been done. I was locked into that one form forever. If I ever shifted back, it would tear through every part of my body.”

“But you did shift back, I assume? Is that how…?”

“Yes, that’s how I ended up like this. I should have died, but I had a lot of help both from mages and from my human friends. I really do believe we’re stronger together. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.”

Fanner felt suddenly, achingly lonely. Yore had placed his trust in all of these people, in someone Fanner apparently knew who was presumably a Companion and in humans, and they had been loyal to him and saved his life. He wanted that, but he knew he could never trust anyone enough to have it. How could you ever truly know that someone wouldn’t betray you? Maybe if you already had a family you could trust, a whole community you were born into supporting you, trusting others was less of a risk. Even if someone betrayed you, you wouldn’t be on your own.

“Are you okay?” Yore asked, and Fanner realised he’d stopped massaging again.

Fanner moved his hands back up to Yore’s shoulders and cleared his throat. “Yes. Sorry. I was just— I was just thinking. It is a complicated story.”

“Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all just yet. There’ll be plenty of people to talk to about all of this.”

“May I ask… how bad is the pain, really?” Because Fanner could feel it under his hands. He could feel the way the scar tissue permeated everything. This was more than a mild irritation.

“If I’m truly honest? It’s enough to take the fun out of life. I don’t want to die, but my life, more than ever, is about duty. About serving my pack, my people, and those I’ve sworn to protect. For that, I’ll endure this. I’d endure anything.”

Fanner swallowed around a lump in his throat. “You should rest now. I’ll keep doing this but— but you can sleep. It’s okay.”

“Thank you, Fanner. You’re a kind person.”

Tears welled in Fanner’s eyes, but he didn’t let himself sniffle. He wasn’t a good person at all. He could fix Yore, he  _ knew _ he could. He could fix Yore and make him not hurt anymore and maybe everything would even be okay. 

But what if it wasn’t? There would be no going back. Mr Burrows had wanted him to be a healer. He had been bred with it in mind. Yet, when he realised he’d been successful, all he did was isolate Fanner and have someone hurt him.

Fanner didn’t believe that was what Yore would do. Things were very different here, but they were different in ways Fanner wasn’t even close to understanding. He didn’t know what Yore might do. He didn’t know if Yore would be as loyal to him as he was to everyone else or if his loyalties to others would compromise his kindness to Fanner in the same way they compromised his concern for his own wellbeing.

And maybe that would just mean overworking him and pushing him in ways that might trigger the more dangerous side of his magic, but what if they started to have the same sorts of thoughts as Mr Burrows? What if they, too, realised that he was a renewable source of organs for transplants? It was hard to imagine Yore condoning that, but what if someone he cared about more than Fanner was dying? What if it were somebody who was crucial to what they were doing? Would he really take the moral high ground? Would everyone else go along with it if he did?

The worst part was that if they asked that of Fanner, he doubted he would have the courage to say no. He could be selfish in secret, but Companions weren’t exactly trained to stand up for their needs and assert their boundaries. They were trained to serve in whatever way was asked of them. He knew he could be easily swayed into doing just about anything, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

But just because he intended to keep his healing powers a secret didn’t mean he could do nothing for Yore. Yore was asleep now, his breathing slow and even. Fanner pressed down a little too hard on one of the painful knots of muscle in Yore’s back and Yore’s breathing hitched, but Yore didn’t stir and a moment later he was back to breathing normally. A small amount of pain wouldn’t wake him.

It had taken Fanner a long time to figure out how to heal scar tissue. Most healing was intuitive, the body’s own natural healing processes guiding his magic, but healing scar tissue was different. Scar tissue was the end result of the body’s own healing. At that point, it was done.

Eventually he had realised he had to actually dissipate the scar tissue before he could do anything else. It was a bit more involved than dissipating dirt from an item of clothing, but it was conceptually similar and not too tricky once he understood what he was doing.

The one problem was that it did hurt a bit. It involved reopening a wound, so of course it did. Fanner was fairly confident that if he went slowly it wouldn’t wake Yore, though. The scars that permeated his body were numerous, but each of them were very small. Yore lived with so much pain in his day to day life that he probably wouldn’t be disrupted by a little sting.

Fanner’s goal was to target key areas in Yore’s back and leave him with just a bit less pain than he started with. He would wake up the next morning and feel good and he would attribute that to the massage, which would mostly be true. The pain would gradually return and if it wasn’t  _ quite _ as bad as it used to be he might not even notice. 

Yore would probably hate him if he ever found out what Fanner could do and how little he actually had done, but at least it was something.


	16. Chapter 16

Yore woke up the next morning to find Fanner tucked in against his side closer than he needed to be in the large bed, still asleep. Yore reached his hand out to gently brush the hair away from Fanner’s face, but he stopped himself before he made contact. It wouldn’t have exactly been a molestation, but sometimes when he travelled with Slone they slept close together and he never would have done that to him. 

He carefully extracted himself instead and went to get dressed. He would let Fanner sleep for a little longer, but they needed to make it all the way home today so they couldn’t delay too long.

Yore braced for pain as he did his morning stretches, but to his surprise it was actually  _ less _ painful than usual. Fanner hadn’t been kidding about being good at massage. 

Despite Fanner’s assurances, Yore had been a little worried the whole massage thing had just been another ploy to seduce him. It wasn’t that he distrusted Fanner personally. He hardly knew him. He had met a few other Companions in the last three years, though, and every one of them had been desperate for sexual validation.

Well, except Lucas, but he didn’t count as a Companion in Yore’s opinion. As Lucas often said, being a Companion was a state of mind, not a matter of genetics. He was still incredibly horny when it suited him, of course, but his libido and his sense of self worth weren’t particularly connected.

Yore was typically not too much of a tempting target for lonely mages because they couldn’t get energy from him. Hamish, as one of the few humans who lived with the mages and someone who was naturally caring, got the worst of it. Despite his general promiscuity, he was incredibly careful about which mages he would have sex with.

Yore had pondered whether Fanner’s unusual behaviour might be related to his unusual powers, but he’d decided that if it was it was probably indirectly. Danya had described Fanner as shy, soft spoken, distractible, and impulsive, which were certainly things Yore had seen in him, but he’d also said he was charming and gently flirtatious which didn’t really fit with the young man he’d met. Charming, maybe, in a sense, but flirtatious? No. His single seduction attempt had involved a rather, ah… direct approach.

Most likely that particular change in his personality was related to him going missing for a year and turning up badly injured, related to the information Lucas had passed on to him about Fanner being tied down and hurt to test his magic. It seemed he had already begun to disconnect himself from the idea of being a Companion, and not in the healthiest of ways.

Yore heard Fanner stir and looked over to see him sit up and rub his eye.

“Good morning,” Yore said. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, um. Good, thank you, sir.” Fanner made a face. “I don’t think I’m supposed to call you sir. Am I?”

“I honestly don’t mind if you do or you don’t. Werewolves address one another by name regardless of rank so it’s certainly not something I expect you to do. Sometimes mages and occasionally Lucas’ human friends do address me that way, though, and it doesn’t bother me.”

Of course, Fanner didn’t actually know there was any real reason he should give Yore special respect. Yore had deliberately skipped formally introducing himself with his titles. Fanner would find out from the others soon enough, but they had such little time left together that it would only needlessly complicate things. Fanner was intimidated enough by him as it was.

“Well, um… maybe I could just call you by your name?” Fanner offered. “Not because I don’t respect you! I do, but I’m trained to only call humans by their names and I think I’d like to— I think in my head I’d like to categorise you as not human.”

“I think that’s a good idea. So that we can be friends, right?”

Fanner ducked his head as he smiled and nodded. “How, um, how are you feeling this morning?”

“Much better, actually. You  _ are _ good at giving massages.”

Fanner nodded. “Maybe— maybe you could come and visit me some time and I can give you another one?”

“I’m a bit of a busy person and there are some things I’ll need to catch up on once I get home, but I’ll try to come by and visit you to make sure you’re settling in okay. I’m sure you’ll be fine, though. They’re used to welcoming ex-slaves and you’ll have a friend there already.”

Fanner dropped his gaze and picked at the bedspread. He didn’t look convinced. “I have a hard time trusting people, but I trust you quite a bit. You’re a good person.”

“Then trust me when I tell you that the people I’m taking you to are every bit as good as I am.”

“I know, I just—” Fanner hesitated and then shook his head. “You’re right, of course. I trust you.”

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s normal to be apprehensive. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll head down and get some breakfast with Lucas?”

Fanner nodded. “Okay.”

#

When they headed downstairs Lucas was sitting at a table with Berron and Fanner was worried he and Yore would have to join them and it would be awkward. To his relief Lucas left the table when he spotted them and the three of them found one of their own.

“Did you sleep well?” Fanner asked Lucas while Yore went to order breakfast for the three of them.

“Yeah, not bad,” Lucas said. “Berron is a bit of a cuddler, but that’s nice sometimes. Though, nicer when it’s someone I can actually sap energy from.”

“Are you not able to receive energy from anything other than humans and other mages?”

“Correct,” Lucas said. “And what about you? Clearly you can take it from Yore, at least.”

Fanner dipped his head and nodded. “I assume it’s any living creature, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. I can get energy from food. I don’t want to take energy from others when I can get it in other ways.”

“Well, I mean, we all get energy from food. It’s not always enough, though, and of course for the rest of us it won’t come naturally balanced.”

“I wish I absorbed energy passively instead. It seems safe. Polite. I wish I could just forget all of the weird things I can do, but I suspect when we get to where Yore is taking me there will be people who will want to put those abilities to use whether I like it or not.”

“They’re good people. They won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Mm, but…”

“But you probably haven’t said no to anyone a single time in your life without getting in trouble for it.”

Fanner nodded. 

“So practise. Say no to people when it doesn’t matter so it’s easier when it does.”

“I— I suppose I can try that.”

Lucas nodded in Yore’s direction as he started to walk back over. “Here’s your chance.”

“Someone will bring our breakfast out soon,” Yore said as he sat down. He held a light brown cookie out to Fanner. “Here, try this. It’s gingerbread.”

Fanner exchanged a look with Lucas and Lucas nodded encouragingly.

“Oh, um…” Fanner said. “No thank you.”

“Are you sure? It’s good.”

Fanner opened his mouth but no words came out. His hand reached for the gingerbread.

Lucas pushed his hand back down. “Say no and don’t apologise this time.”

“But I don’t want to be rude and— and I’d like to try it.”

“Nope, you have to say no.”

“Lucas—” Yore started to say, but Lucas held a hand up to silence him and gave him a stern look.

“Tell him no, you don’t want the cookie,” Lucas told Fanner.

Fanner could feel his breathing coming faster and tighter, his heart rate speeding up. “But I—”

“Just. Say. No.”

“No,” Fanner said, as firm and as confident as he could muster, and he reached out and took the cookie.

Lucas’ face broke into a smile and he let out a laugh. “There you go. How do you feel?”

Fanner nibbled the edge of the cookie. “Like I’m going to throw up.”

“Ginger’s good for nausea,” Yore offered.

“Some mages get their freedom but they never really stop being slaves,” Lucas said. “It’s a mindset that can be hard to get away from. But you, Fanner. You’re smart and you’re fiercer than you let on. I think you’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” Fanner said. “I hope you’re right…”


	17. Chapter 17

They finished breakfast with Lucas, gathered their belongings, and started off on a long day’s walk to their final destination. As they left, Yore noticed Fanner kept glancing around.

“Are you looking for someone?” Yore asked.

“Oh, uh, no. I mean— yes, I suppose so, actually. I haven’t seen Cookie at all this morning.”

“I can do a quick run and try to track her down if you like, but she’s probably down in the mines and I can’t do tunnels.”

“Oh, because of the—” Fanner shook his head. “No, it’s okay. It doesn’t really matter.”

“You know, I’m still surprised how quickly you took to her. It takes most recently freed mages a little while to even adjust to something like me.”

“If I’m honest, I liked the attention, even if she only liked me because of the emotional energy I give out. There is nothing more typical of a Companion than being desperate for attention.”

Yore laughed. “Yes, but they’re not normally that self aware about it. At least not so early on.”

“Mm.”

“I get the feeling this isn’t the beginning of your journey away from being a Companion, though. Lucas mentioned that you told him that the people you were with before this hurt you routinely.”

“Oh, um. Yes.” Fanner picked at a loose thread on the shirt Lucas had given him. He seemed determined not to look at Yore.

“Was he not supposed to tell me that?”

Fanner shrugged. “I didn’t ask him not to.”

“I think he thought that it was important I know, given that I’d already unintentionally put you in a particularly distressing position out of ignorance of your experiences. I understand if you’d rather he hadn’t, though.”

“No, it’s okay. I would just rather not talk about it. A—at least not in detail. But you are right. I’m already used to the idea of not being a Companion.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Well, I wasn’t terribly good at being a Companion, so I suppose it’s no real loss. Though I’m not sure I’m much good at anything else, either.”

“You’re good at giving massages.”

“I am.”

Yore smiled. It was good to hear him have confidence in himself in at least one thing. The only other thing he seemed to like about himself was his physical appearance. Considering his training there were almost certainly some awful things mixed up in that, but there was no denying he was handsome. He had the kind of good looks that made Yore want to reach out and touch him when he looked at him sometimes. Not even really in a sexual way. He was just… drawn to him.

He’d met other Companions, of course — Lucas was one by breeding — and though they looked similar to Fanner they had never triggered quite the same feelings in him. Perhaps it had more to do with the circumstances under which they’d met and the protective role Yore had taken on. 

They reached the border of the dwarves’ territory and stopped for a quick lunch, then continued on down the barely existent dirt track through the territory they called the swamp lands. The part of it they were walking through wasn’t actually part of the swamp, which was a good thing because the swamp was extremely dangerous. The swamp bordered the far edge of the territory and ensured nobody passed through.

Yore’s hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be and it had never been fantastic in this form, but he was becoming more and more convinced that they were being followed. He couldn’t smell anything over the disant odor of the swamp and it had so far stayed out of sight, but he was certain he wasn’t imagining things.

Yore held a hand up to signal for Fanner to stop walking and calmly put the bag down. “Something’s following us. I’m going to take my clothes off in case I need to shift quickly.”

Fanner’s eyes went wide. “What is it? Are we in danger?”

“The answer to your first question is I don’t know, so the answer to your second one has to be the same.” Yore pulled his shirt off over his head and shoved it into the bag. “I’m not too worried, though. It hasn’t done anything so far, so it might just be curious.”

“If something happens, what should I do? I don’t think I’d be much use in a fight…”

Yore took his shoes off, tied the laces together, and slung them over his neck. “Whatever I tell you to do. For some things I might want you to run so that you’re out of the way of any danger. Other things might want to separate us or might not be a big enough threat for you to run away, so you’re better off staying nearby.”

Fanner nodded. “Okay, um. Yes. How will I find you again if I run away?”

“I’ll find you, like I did last time you ran away. I’m a wolf, remember? Just run until you feel safe, hunker down, and I’ll come and find you.  _ If _ I tell you to run.”

Fanner’s lips moved, silently repeating the words of the last sentence Yore had said back to himself as though he were afraid he would forget the instructions. He nodded, but he still looked unsure of himself.

Yore was just shoving his pants into the bag along with the rest of his clothes when he saw something leap from one tree to another closer to them from the corner of his eye. It was fast and agile, but definitely smaller than he was. He reached his arm out to guide Fanner behind him.

Something leapt from the tree and Yore started to move, but his brain caught up with his eyes by the time it hit the ground and he let out a breath of relief.

“Cookie!” Fanner exclaimed as he moved out from behind Yore. “Why were you hiding, Cookie? You scared us!”

“Maybe that was the point,” Yore murmured as he set the bag down and prepared to get his clothes back out.

“Oh, is my passive fear not good enough for you anymore, Cookie? Because it’s more than enough for me, thank you very much.”

“No wonder I couldn’t smell anything. It’s probably too subtle for you to notice, but she always smells a bit swampy. This is probably where she came from.”

“Aw, you’re the cutest swamp monster, Cookie,” Fanner said as he patted her head. It made a gross tacky sound.

Yore smiled as Cookie butted her head against Fanner’s stomach, playfully pushing him backwards as she chittered. It was good to see Fanner relaxing and opening up a bit. He had heard pets could be good for that, although Cookie was admittedly a rather unconventional choice.

As Yore watched them, his smile slowly morphed into a frown. Cookie wasn’t just playfully butting Fanner with her head. She was intentionally pushing him backwards, away from Yore. Fanner would try to get around her to come back and she would block his path and push him back more.

Yore cautiously moved towards them, but once he was closer it became clear that it wasn’t himself Cookie was trying to get Fanner away from. He lifted his head and sniffed the air, but he couldn’t smell anything but swamp.

By now, Fanner had gone quiet and he was no longer smiling. He had picked up on Yore’s state of alert.

“Stay with Cookie,” Yore told Fanner as he took slow, cautious steps in the direction Cookie had been pushing Fanner away from, every sense he had on high alert. Cookie chittered loudly and he stopped in his tracks a moment before what he had believed to be a pile of boulders began to shudder and lift up off of the ground.

A fucking rock golem.

As Yore started to shift, vulnerable for a moment, Cookie leapt forward and drew the rock golem’s attention.

Halfway between forms, Yore turned to Fanner. “ _ Run _ .”

#

As Fanner started to run he saw the first boulder be thrown, heard the boom of it exploding as it struck a tree. What was that thing? He hoped Yore and Cookie would be right behind him, that they were just distracting it for a moment to give him a head start, but he got further and further away and they didn’t appear at his side.

He tried to keep to the path, but that didn’t last long. It was hard enough to see at a walk, and once he stumbled off it he had no chance of finding it again without slowing down and he wasn’t about to do that. He could still hear the distant boom of exploding boulders.

He ran and he ran until he couldn’t hear the sounds anymore, and then he found a hidden spot in a dried up creek bed and he hunkered down, like Yore had told him.

Would they be okay? Were they fast enough to evade that thing? Should Fanner have stayed and… and done  _ something _ ? He felt bad for leaving them to fight it on their own, but he wasn’t as fast as they were. They would have been in more danger if they had needed to protect him.

Maybe he could have drawn energy from it and knocked it out like he had Yore, but Fanner wasn’t even sure it was a living thing in that sense. Besides, he would have had to get close enough to touch it and then kept his hand on it for at least a couple of seconds, which almost certainly would not have gone well.

If they died it would be Fanner’s fault. Or… maybe fault wasn’t the right word, but it would be because of him. Yore and Cookie were fast. They both could have easily escaped on their own. The only reason they hadn’t was to protect Fanner.

Fanner heard something shuffling above him and froze, but then he heard a quiet chittering. He lifted his head as Cookie shuffled her way down into the creek bed.

She sat down in front of him in a way that was disconcertingly human-like and began poking at her back with hands she usually used like feet. Her back was wet with a greyish red liquid that Fanner suddenly realised was blood.

Fanner reached a hand out, slow and cautious in case she… well, not bit him, because she didn’t have teeth. She could probably take a pretty good swat at him with those claws of hers if she wanted to.

Fanner wasn’t really sure how aware Cookie was of her surroundings and wasn’t sure how she got around at all, given her apparent lack of eyes or ears or even a nose. When his hand made contact with her back, though, it didn’t seem to startle her.

“I’m going to help you,” Fanner told her as he started to dissipate the blood so that he could get a closer look at the wounds. She clearly hadn’t been hit by any of the boulders directly, but it looked like some of the small pieces that had exploded off had hit her like shrapnel. It had scratched her up and lodged in her skin in some places.

Fanner carefully picked the bits of stone out of her skin and then healed the cuts. Despite her weirdness, healing her wasn’t much different from healing a human or a cow or a werewolf.

“Is Yore okay?” Fanner asked as he healed up the last of Cookie’s wounds. “I thought he’d be right behind you, but he’s still not back.”

Cookie ignored him — or had no way of hearing and/or understanding him — and wandered off a few steps. She made a retching sound for a few seconds and then threw up a dark, muddy sludge on the ground in front of her. She poked through the vomit, extracted a filthy coin, put the coin in her mouth and swallowed it back down. She wandered over to a shallow puddle in the creek bed and started shovelling mud into her mouth.

“Cookie, you’re a  _ little _ weird,” Fanner told her.

Cookie ignored him again and started climbing up the creek bank. 

Fanner hesitated, wanting to follow, but Yore had instructed him to stay put. “Don’t go too far, okay? Don’t leave me alone.  _ Please _ .”

Cookie didn’t acknowledge him, just continued up the creek bank until she was out of sight and Fanner was once more alone. Having to just sit, and wait, and  _ hope _ Yore wasn’t dead was torture. Fanner wasn’t even sure how long it had been. At least half an hour, surely. If he was okay, he should be back by now.

Some time later Fanner heard a sound above him, but it was only Cookie climbing back down the creek bank, a fat, ugly fish in her mouth. She spat it out at Fanner’s feet.

“Oh, um, thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Fanner told her. “Though I appreciate that you tried to find something more suitable to feed me than coins and mud.”

Cookie picked the fish back up, stretched her mouth wide, and swallowed it whole.

“Okay,” Fanner said. “For something that supposedly eats emotions, you sure do eat a lot of things that aren’t emotions.”

Cookie put a rock in her mouth, spat it back out, and then exchanged it for a beetle she’d just found.

“Maybe it is to you what energy is to mages. Yore has enough energy in him to keep me at full all the time if I stole it from him, but I would still need to eat food. I still have a physical body that requires me to ingest physical matter to sustain it.”

Cookie lay down, flat on her back in the mud, and let out a sigh.

“What am I supposed to do if he doesn’t come back? He just told me to wait for him, like him being okay was a certainty. But it isn’t. What if he’s dead? Or what if he’s hurt and I could help him? I’m a selfish coward, but I wouldn’t let him  _ die _ .”

Cookie’s mouth hung open. She had lips which were the same greyish colour as the rest of her, which was kind of weird.

“Maybe I should go and look for him. He’s been gone for too long. He might need help.” Fanner started to get up and Cookie reached an arm out and swatted him back down without otherwise moving from her comfortable position in the mud. “No, you’re right. He told me to stay put. I’m not very good at staying still sometimes.”

Cookie grabbed a fistful of mud and slowly ate it.

“Thanks for staying with me, Cookie. You’re a good friend.”


	18. Chapter 18

It took Yore far longer than he would have liked to lure the rock golem into the swamp, dodging hands that reached up from the mud as they went. He’d hoped to get it bogged down in the mud, but it just kept ploughing through it. At least there were no boulders for it to throw out here and the mud slowed it down enough that it had no chance of getting close enough to slam its rocky arms into him.

When he trusted the wrong ground and sunk belly deep into the mud himself, he decided he was done. The dead grabbed for him and tried to pull him under, but he managed to struggle and squirm his way back onto firmer ground. It looked like they’d distracted the rock golem as well. Yore took the opportunity to dash back the way he’d come.

He hated that he’d left Fanner alone for so long, but he had needed to get the rock golem clear of the path. It was too dangerous. Members of his own pack used this route regularly. Chances were, a group had been sent out looking for him and would be coming back this way once they stopped in at the inn and were told that he was fine and had already headed home.

Hopefully Cookie was with Fanner. She’s stayed with Yore long enough to ensure he had the situation under control and then she’d dashed off. He didn’t know that she was capable of much in the way of fighting, if it came to that, but she was smart and she seemed particularly protective of Fanner. 

He doubled back to where the fight had been started, left the bag for now, and began to track Fanner. Cookie seemed to have come this way as well, but the path she took was meandering. However she had tracked him seemed quite different from Yore’s method.

Yore heard the distant sound of Fanner’s voice and ran in its direction. Fanner fell abruptly silent as Yore got close, but he could smell him now. Cookie chittered, loud and friendly, from the bottom of a dried up creek bed. Fanner poked his head up as Yore climbed down the bank.

“Yore!” Fanner exclaimed, throwing his arms around Yore’s furry body. “I thought you were  _ dead _ .”

Yore waited until Fanner let go and then shifted back into his human form. “I’m sorry I left you along for so long. I had to get the rock golem away from the path.”

Fanner hugged him again, and this time Yore had arms to hug him back with. Fanner was shaking, his breathing coming fast and uneven.

Yore rubbed his back. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine now. You’re safe and so am I.”

“I really thought you died.”

“I’m sorry, Fanner. Really. I wanted to come and find you sooner, but I was worried someone would get hurt if I didn’t deal with it right away.”

Fanner pulled back and looked Yore over. “ _ You’re _ hurt.”

“A little, and very muddy. Sorry. I had to go all the way out into the swamp to get it far enough away.”

Fanner started brushing his hands over Yore, not quite touching him as he dissipated the mix of blood and dried mud on his skin. He paused to pick a shard of rock out of a cut on Yore’s shoulder. He was still breathing unevenly and his eyes were red and damp.

“Hey, are you okay?” Yore asked.

Fanner gave a shaky nod of his head, but it wasn’t very convincing.

“I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You saved my life. You and Cookie.”

Yore offered him a gentle smile. “She was good, wasn’t she? Somehow she knew that thing was there and she was determined to protect you.”

“I saw it when it still just looked like a pile of rocks and— and I was going to go and sit on it and have a drink of water.”

“She stayed long enough for me to get the situation under my control and then she ran off after you. I’m glad she found you.”

“Do you think they’ll let her stay at the settlement you’re taking me to? If she wants to, I mean.”

“I don’t see why not. I’ll talk to them about it for you.”

“Thank you. I wish I could go with you, but if I at least have Cookie maybe… maybe things will be okay.”

“Things will be  _ fine _ . You’re starting to trust me and that’s good, but we’ve only known one another for a few days. We’ve gotten a bit closer a bit faster than we otherwise might have because of the circumstances, but if you can get to know me this quickly I’m sure you’ll have lots of friends within a week.”

Fanner nodded as he lifted Yore’s arm and cleaned under his armpit. He still looked so distressed, so vulnerable. “What if I don’t? What if things really aren’t okay?”

“If things  _ really _ aren’t okay you can come and visit me and I’ll help you figure things out. But only if you really need to, okay? I’m not saying that I don’t want to see you, but I have a lot of things going on in my life and there are a bunch of things I need to jump right into when I get back.”

Fanner nodded. “Thank you. I promise I won’t bother you just because I miss you.”

_ That _ made Yore’s heart clench. He wanted to reassure Fanner that he wouldn’t be bothering him, that he’d actually like to see him, he just couldn’t afford to take on the extra responsibility. He wasn’t sure that would help, though. Fanner was a person, a friend, not a responsibility, but he did need help and that would take a great deal of time, patience, and careful thought.

“I’ll come and visit you as soon as I can,” Yore promised. He smiled as Fanner circled around him, checking for any remaining mud. Yore would have settled for a quick rinse in the river, but Fanner had done thorough work. “Am I sufficiently de-mudded yet?”

Fanner made a sound of dismay in the back of his throat. “You’re covered in tiny cuts.”

“Don’t worry about it, Fanner. I’m a man who’s had tiny cuts all throughout my internal organs. I can handle having them on the surface of my skin.”

Fanner took a deep breath in and let it out as a sigh.

Yore did his best to turn his reflex to laugh into a kind smile. Fanner just sounded so  _ serious _ . “It’s just some minor cuts. Like I said, I’ve had worse. Hell,  _ you’ve _ had worse. Why is this upsetting you so much?”

Fanner shrugged. He wouldn’t look Yore in the eye. Of all the things that had happened to him on this journey — and  _ a lot _ of shit had happened to him in just a few short days — this one seemed to have shaken him the most.

Yore looked around. “Hey, where’s Cookie? She’s surprisingly stealthy for… I don’t even know how to describe the shape that she is.”

Fanner let out a slightly broken but genuine laugh. “She went away and caught me a fish before. She probably hasn’t gone far. Or maybe she has. I don’t really know what goes on in her head or what motivates her, but it’s worked out in my favour so far.”

“Thanks for cleaning me up. Now, I’ll need to go get the bag before we continue. I feel like it might distract from the moment a little if I’m naked when I bring you in.”

Fanner nodded. “Okay.”

“Do you want to come with me or stay here? I can get it quicker on my own, but I’ll understand if you’re not too keen on being left alone again.”

“Um... is it okay if I come with you?”

“I wouldn’t have made the offer if it wasn’t okay. That would be an awful trap.”

“Oh, um, yeah. I suppose so.”

Yore walked up the bank and offered Fanner a hand to help him up. “But I imagine you’ve been treated badly quite a lot, so things that seem petty and cruel to me might be normal to you.”

“I spent almost my entire life in a training facility. Everything was a test.”

Fanner was standing at the top of the bank at Yore’s side now, but Yore didn’t let go of his hand. “That must have been rough.”

Fanner looked down at their linked hands and gave Yore’s a gentle squeeze. “No, not at all. We were given everything we needed and nobody ever hurt us.”

“Were you happy?”

“No,” Fanner said. He didn’t even need to think about that one.

“Emotional hardship can be just as bad as physical hardship. Hell, much worse sometimes. If I had to choose between letting someone break my legs and spending a day chained up in a dark tunnel, I guess I’d have to make myself some crutches.”

Fanner placed his other hand over the top of Yore’s as well and held on. “Maybe, I guess. I really don’t like being hurt.”

“I don’t think it’s really that different. Maybe if I’d been hurt in the same way you’ve been hurt — which I really don’t know much about but I can piece a few things together — maybe then I’d feel the same way. It’s all just different kinds of trauma.”

Fanner swallowed thickly. His eyes were still aimed at their hands. “It’s not fair that you got hurt so badly. You’re such a good person.”

“Thank you, but also yes. It’s  _ not _ fair. Bad things didn’t happen to you because you deserved it. Good things also happen to people who don’t deserve them. You just have to take what life gives you and try to work towards wherever you want to be in life.”

“I feel like…” Fanner hesitated. “I think the only thing I really want is to be okay.”

“You’ll get there,” Yore assured him. “I’d say you already are okay, in the sense that you’re safe and you’ll be taken care of from here on out, but I know there’s more to it than that. You’ve been through something big. Heck, in a sense your whole life has been one big struggle. That doesn’t just go away and become fine the second you’re somewhere safe.”

Fanner nodded. He looked like he might cry again.

“Okay, let’s—” Yore started to say, and then he paused and looked up into the trees. He could hear something moving around. “Cookie, I know that’s you. I know what you sound like now. You can’t fool me twice.”

Cookie leapt down from a nearby tree, landing gracelessly, the large bag she was carrying in her mouth sending her toppling forward.  _ Their _ bag.

“Oh, you got the bag for us. Thank you?”

“Do we have any snacks we can give her?” Fanner asked. “She likes to eat… things. Anything.”

“Just some old biscuits. I left them because our water leaked on the bag and they got all soggy.”

Cookie opened her dark, empty maw of a mouth as wide as she could — which was wider than Yore was entirely comfortable with — and then just held it open until Yore let go of Fanner’s hands, got out the bag of biscuits, and put one in. She swallowed it whole and then took the rest of the bag from Yore and swallowed that as well, bag included.

“Hmm,” was all Yore could think to say to that. “Well, all right. Shall we keep going?”

They were a bit behind schedule now, but Yore was still confident they could reach the mage settlement before dark. It didn’t really matter if they didn’t since this area no longer held an active vampire nest, but he wasn’t sure how Fanner would feel about travelling in the dark after everything that had happened.

It was another hour of walking before they reached the start of Yore’s territory. He hadn’t seen or heard Cookie in a while, but he suspected she was still following them.

“This is where my people live,” Yore explained, patting the wooden post that served as a marker. “We’ll cut across to save time, but I won’t take you into our settlement today.”

“Am I allowed to be here?” Fanner asked. “I won’t get in trouble if someone sees us, will I?”

“You’re with me. Of course you’re allowed. But, more generally speaking, we’re allies. There are certain expectations like that you won’t hunt on or otherwise use our land without explicit permission, but it’s not like you have to be afraid of accidentally crossing the border because it’ll cause a huge incident or someone will attack you or anything. Most likely someone will notice you and come and see if you need any help.”

“Okay. And… you live next to us?”

“No, that’s the centaurs. They can seem a bit imposing at first, but they’ve been allies to the mages from the start. The mage camp is to the east of the centaurs and we’re north of the centaurs.”

Fanner nodded, but from the distant look in his eyes Yore got the feeling he wasn’t quite taking it all in.

“Don’t worry about it. There’ll be people to help you and show you around for as long as you need it.”

“Okay,” Fanner said, but he still looked worried. Yore really wished he knew what to say to assure Fanner it really would be okay, but perhaps that was just something he’d have to see for himself.

Yore heard the sound of paws running across bare earth long before he saw a pale grey wolf emerge from between the trees.

He gave her a nod as she shifted. “Good afternoon, Kiana.”

“Your mother’s worried about you,” was the first thing Kiana said once she was standing on two feet. “You’re days late.”

“I know. I was delayed, but I’m fine.”

She glanced over him but seemed to decide not to comment on the superficial but very obvious cuts on the side of his face and his neck. She looked at Fanner instead. “Who’s that?”

“Just someone I’m taking back to the mages. Tell my mother I’ll be home as soon as I’m done with that. Also, we’ll need a party to deal with a rock golem. We encountered one on the path. I led it back into the swamp, but you know how they are.”

“They do tend to wander. Okay, I’ll get things moving on that for you.”

Without further conversation, she shifted again and dashed back into the woods.

“Who was that?” Fanner whispered, like he wasn’t quite sure she couldn’t still hear him. Which was fair. Their hearing was quite a bit better than his, though she was far away enough away that it wasn’t a concern.

“Kiana. She’s my, uh… cousin?” Not that that really mattered. Some of the members of his pack were related to him closely enough to trace, some weren’t, and it didn’t make a whole lot of difference for the most part. They were all family.

“Oh,” Fanner said. He didn’t sound satisfied with the answer.

“My mother leads the pack, so she’ll go and consult with her about the rock golem. Kiana’s mostly a scout and a trapper.”

“Oh, okay. What are you?”

“Whatever I need to be.”

Which was a cop out of an answer and not entirely true, but this really wasn’t the time to explain everything to Fanner. Though, if he were truly honest, his reluctance wasn’t just about not wanting to scare or confuse Fanner. He was mostly just enjoying this mini vacation from his normal life and wanted to maintain the separation until he’d completed his task and brought Fanner safely to the mages.

They made it through the rest of the pack’s territory without another interruption. 

Yore stopped Fanner at the post that marked the territory’s south eastern corner. “Are you ready for this?”

“No, but…” Fanner shrugged.

Yore offered him a sympathetic smile. “It’s hard, but waiting won’t fix that.”

Fanner nodded. He took a deep breath in and let it out. “Okay. Let’s do this.”


	19. Chapter 19

The first ten minutes or so of walking just brought them through more woodlands, but then the trees thinned and Fanner saw the first of the wooden cabins. This was not a tiny or ramshackle settlement. They were fully established here.

They even had flowers growing in little rock lined flower beds in front of the cabins. There was a man and a young girl crouched down, working on one of them in front of the cabin nearest to them.

“Hamish!” Yore called out, and the man looked up. Fanner had heard that name before. Lucas had called him the resident whore.

The man looked up and grinned before standing and dusting his hands off on his pants. He had dark, curly hair. Definitely not a mage. “Yore! I’m glad to see you’re okay. Some of your people came by looking for you.”

“Yes, I got a little waylaid,” Yore said, nodding in Fanner’s direction.

Hamish turned his attention to Fanner and offered him a smile. “Hello, my name’s Hamish, and welcome to Magic Town!”

“That’s not the actual name of this settlement,” Yore said.

“It is if I say it enough times and nobody comes up with anything else.”

“Thank you,” Fanner said, the word ‘sir’ on the tip of his tongue. As far as he could tell Hamish was human, but he wasn’t sure that really mattered here. “I’m Fanner.”

The playful smile fell away from Hamish’s face as he looked between Yore and Fanner. “Shit. Not…?”

Yore nodded.

“You found him?  _ How _ ?”

“I’ve told him we have a friend of his here, but not who. I think this story would be best told with his friend here so that I only have to tell it once. Is he around?”

“Yeah, he’s at home with Jassy.” Hamish leant down and whispered something in the little girl’s ear. She nodded and ran off. “She’ll get him.”

Fanner found himself slowly drifting closer to Yore’s side. Why did everyone know who he was? Why had there seemingly been some great search for him? They hadn’t seemed to know anything about his unusual magic but he couldn’t imagine why else they might care.

The little girl came running back with a strange, furry child bounding after her. He had ears like a dog that stuck up from the top of his head and a wagging tail protruding from a hole in his pants. His entire body was covered in a layer of fine, brown fur. He had hands, sort of. His fingers were about half the usual length and tipped with claws. His feet were long, narrow, and bare. He had run over to them on all fours, but now that he was with them he stood up on two legs like a human.

“Fanner,” a voice that stirred feelings of familiarity deep in Fanner’s stomach said, and Fanner looked up. For a moment he didn’t recognise the man standing in front of him, or perhaps his brain just refused to believe it. His hair was shorter and he was a few years older, but it was undeniably Danya.

A moment later they were wrapped in each other’s arms, clinging to one another. Danya’s embrace felt so much firmer, so much stronger than it had used to.

Danya lifted his head from where he had buried it against Fanner’s shoulder. “How did you find him?”

“Accidentally, actually,” Yore said. “I just found him in the woods. He escaped on his own, or at least I assume he did. He still hasn’t told me the whole story.”

Danya leant back to look at Fanner. “Where  _ were _ you? We looked for you, but you had just disappeared.”

Fanner didn’t want to answer that question, so he countered it with one of his own. “How are you here? They told us you had died.”

“Oh, yeah, we did this thing called lying,” Hamish contributed. “It’s  _ extremely _ useful.”

“Essentially,” Danya said. “I’m sorry I put you through that. I’d hoped they wouldn’t bother to tell you.”

They had bothered, though hardly. Fanner remembered that morning. They’d been lined up outside, being told which lessons they would each be attending for the day, and the warden had just casually mentioned it as an aside.

Fanner hadn’t been the only one who had been shaken. They had all known Danya, had been helped and supported by him, though none of them were nearly as close to him as Fanner and Duran. They’d cried together that night, wrapped in one another’s arms. They had hoped that after so many years of being rejected that Danya would finally find somewhere he could be wanted, but he hadn’t survived more than a few weeks.

But of course that was how things really were. This idea of finding a master who would treasure you forever and keep you safe was pure fantasy. A few weeks of life after being purchased was a particularly grim fate for a Companion, but at a certain point was living longer any better?

And yet, a new reality was standing in front of him. One in which Danya looked alive and healthy and far more confident in himself than he ever had been at the House.

Fanner dropped his gaze as he did his best to wrangle his emotions back in and his eyes landed on the strange, furry child. He was clutching at the hem of Danya’s shirt, watching Fanner with reserved curiosity. “Who’s this?”

“Oh, yes!” Danya placed an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “This,  _ this _ , is Jasper. My son.”

“Oh!” was all Fanner could think to say to that.

Danya laughed. “Adopted, of course. It’s a long story. Jas, this is your Uncle Fanner.”

For a moment panic flooded Fanner’s gut because how did he know and what else did he know and… and… and then he realised that Danya hadn’t meant ‘uncle’ literally. They had always considered themselves like brothers.

Fanner hesitated. Should he tell Danya the truth? Fanner had thought Danya was dead. He hadn’t had the chance to think this over yet. But… Danya should know this. Maybe other things as well, because he was also a part of this whole mess in a way, but for now Fanner wanted him to at least know this one thing.

“Um, we are actually,” Fanner said. When Danya looked confused, Fanner clarified. “Brothers, I mean. Real brothers. Or, well, real half brothers. We have the same mother. Mr Burrows told me after we thought you died.”

Danya let out a slow breath and took a moment to just look at Fanner. “You know, I always would have told you that it doesn’t matter whether or not we’re related by blood. That I love you like my brother regardless. But now that I know… it does matter. Not in making me love you any more or less, but… it matters.”

“That maybe explains some things,” Yore said. “He has some unusual aspects to his magic. Although, we always thought yours came from your father being a Soldier, didn’t we? But you share a mother.”

Yore’s eyes cut to Fanner and he frowned slightly. Could he hear the sudden increase in Fanner’s heart rate?

Fanner should have kept everything to himself, because he knew the answers to these questions and now he would have to deliberately withhold them or tell them everything and he wasn’t ready to tell them everything.

Danya looked at Fanner. “Unusual aspects? You never told me anything about that.”

“W—well you didn’t tell me about yours either.”

“I know. I was in the same situation so I don’t blame you one bit. Being different at the House was a scary thing. Will you tell me about it now?”

“Well, I—” How little could he get away with revealing? Yore already knew some things. “I have this thing. It’s called energy shaping. I can control energy — move it around — so I can keep myself balanced.”

“It’s a bit more than that,” Yore said. “He pulled energy out of me and knocked me out for a few minutes. He didn’t know I was trying to help him at that point so I don’t blame him for it, but it certainly was something.”

“Huh,” Danya said. “I can’t do anything like that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Fanner said. “I’m not going to do it ever again. I don’t need to be balanced so you don’t have to worry about me, but that’s all.”

“You’re much more assertive than you used to be. That’s good. And I don’t want to undermine that, but…” Danya heaved out a sigh. “I feel like you’re in the same place I was when I first got my freedom. I felt like I could only be a Companion, that I only  _ wanted _ to be a Companion, that everything else I could do was bad and shameful. You can be whatever you want to be now, Fanner.”

Fanner stared straight ahead, at the side of one of the cabins. “I want to be a Companion.”

“Ultimately that’s for you to decide, but we’re going to keep talking about this, okay? I don’t want you to make that decision out of fear, and I can see that you’re scared.”

Fanner wanted to say no, that he didn’t want to talk about it or even think about it, that he wanted to push that part of himself deep inside where it couldn’t hurt anyone else or be used to hurt him. Instead, he nodded.

“Fanner,” Yore said, and Fanner looked up. “I really need to get going. Will you be okay?”

“Yes, I— Thank you for…” There were so many things Fanner wanted to thank Yore for, but none of them were materialising into words in his mind. “Thank you.”

Yore gave him a gentle smile. “You’ll be fine.”

Fanner nodded, though he didn’t feel so sure.

“Oh, before I go,” Yore said to the others, “there’s this strange creature that we met at The Inn that’s been following Fanner around. Grey, hairless, generally unpleasant to look at. She has no eyes, ears, or nose, but somehow has sharper senses than I do. She’s harmless and her name is Cookie. Fanner has made friends with her and she seems to be quite protective of him, so make sure if anyone sees her they don’t scare her off or hurt her.”

“You know, when you started telling us that there’s a scary monster that’s been following Fanner, that’s not where I expected you to end up,” Hamish commented.

“I’d hope everyone knows not to initiate violence against any creature that doesn’t start it, regardless of how it looks, but I’ll make sure everyone knows,” Danya assured Yore.

“Thanks. I’ll try to come and visit in a few days, Fanner.”

“Wait,” Fanner said as Yore turned to leave. As soon as Yore turned back around, Fanner wrapped his arms around him in a tight hug. “ _ Thank you _ .”

Yore hugged him back and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “You’ll be  _ fine _ .”

As Yore started to walk away, Hamish called out to him. “Hey Yore, can I get a kiss on my head too? Or anywhere, really. I’m not picky.”

Yore didn’t acknowledge him.


	20. Chapter 20

Danya drew in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “Hamish, could you find Simon for me? I think he was helping to fix some things today, but I’m sure they won’t mind if I steal him back early given the circumstances.”

“Sure.” Hamish scooped Jasper up in his arms. “Let’s go find your dad. Can you sniff him out for me?”

Jasper squirmed out of Hamish’s arms. “I’m too big to be carried.”

“Nah, you’re not, because I’m  _ really _ strong. I can pick up even the biggest of kids.”

“I’m stronger than you!” Jasper insisted, then he dashed off on all fours.

“I don’t think that’s true…” Hamish said as he followed after him.

Danya watched them leave and then turned back to Fanner and smiled and shook his head. “Come on. I’ll show you where we live. You can stay with us until we can find somewhere more permanent for you.”

“Oh! Thank you. I hope I won’t be in the way.”

Danya frowned at him. “Fanner, I’ve been looking for you for almost a year now. You’re not in the way.”

Fanner didn’t know what to say to that, how to process the concept that all this time when he had felt so alone and uncared for there had been someone out there trying to find him. His own brother. Was this what it felt like to have family?

Fanner followed Danya down a dirt path that led between the cabins. They weren’t of uniform shape or size or even particularly lined up neatly. Some were painted in various colours and they all had their own decorative touches.

The cabin Danya led him up to had a low fence surrounding its garden beds covered in tiny, short fingered handprints in several different colours of paint. Jasper’s work, clearly.

Inside the cabin was a small room with a single door leading off of it. It contained a table surrounded by four wooden chairs, some bedding on the floor, a chest, and a cupboard. There was a well worn plush dog sitting on the pile of bedding.

Danya guided Fanner to the bedding and they sat down together. Fanner picked up the plush dog and clutched it in his lap.

“Where have you been, Fanner?” Danya asked again. “I didn’t bring you here right away because things were still a little chaotic. I didn’t want to bring you into an unstable situation when you were still safe at Milaine House. Then about a year ago I finally decided it was time to bring you in. Maybe the situation won’t stay safe and stable for long, but Fanner,  _ something _ is going to happen and I want you with us when it does.”

“Something?”

“The humans don’t want to follow us over the border to confront us properly, but eventually they will. If we lose, perhaps we’re driven further outside of human territory and won’t be able to easily return. If we win… well, who knows, but you might have felt the ripples of that even if you weren’t involved.”

“Oh.”

“Wherever you were…” Danya said. “We broke into the offices, you know. We looked through your file. It just abruptly ended when you disappeared. No sale documents. Nothing about a transfer. Not even documentation of your death. They still had a file on me and there was a note about  _ me _ dying in there. There should have been  _ something _ . What happened?”

Fanner shrugged. There was a small tear in the fabric of the dog and Fanner focussed on mending it with his magic so that he would have an excuse not to look at Danya. “Mr Burrows found out about my powers and he wanted to test them, but that sort of magic would be illegal so I suppose there was no official documentation of his experiments.”

“Experiments? Fanner, what did he  _ do _ to you?”

“He just hurt me because, um.” Fanner found himself involuntarily swallowing as his throat closed up. “Because I heal faster when I pull energy from things, I guess. Or just in general. But, um. Can you not tell anyone about that? I don’t want anyone getting the same ideas…”

Danya looked absolutely heartbroken, so Fanner looked back down at the plush dog. “Fanner, nobody’s going to hurt you here. They have no right to. Okay?”

“Well, what does that  _ mean _ ?” Fanner asked. “Did Mr Burrows have the right to? Maybe, because he owned me, but all you really need to own someone is enough power over them. I imagine there are plenty of people here more powerful than me…”

Danya sighed. “I understand why you would feel that way. We were never given rights. Of course telling you something is your ‘right’ doesn’t feel like a guarantee. But, Fanner, what unites us here is a moral objection to slavery. Nobody here is going to make a slave of you, and if they tried to they would be stopped.  _ I _ would stop them personally if nobody else beat me to it.”

“I— I suppose I sort of knew that, but—” Fanner turned the plush dog in his hands, over and over. “I’m just not a fighter, and I don’t want to be, but if there’s a big battle coming and everyone knows the things I can do they’ll want me to fight. Maybe they can’t force me in the same sense you would force a slave, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy to say no.”

“I can see your point. Things get more complicated in that sort of situation. Even if nobody pressures you, I can’t guarantee you’ll never be in a position where you have to choose to either fight or let something bad happen to yourself or others. If that happens, I hope you won’t be too afraid of yourself to do what you need to.”

Fanner nodded, his eyes firmly aimed at the plush dog.

“You won’t be the only non-combatant, though. You’ve met my son. He’s four. If anything happens, my top priority is getting him somewhere safe. There are many children here, many mages among us who have absolutely no combat abilities. There will be a group for you to go with. But… yes. I do hope that if I wasn’t there, you would step up to protect Jasper if it ever came to it.”

Fanner hesitated and then nodded. Of course he would. He had used his ability against Yore because he had thought it was necessary. If he would do that to protect himself, he would do whatever he needed to in order to protect Jasper. He just really hoped to avoid ever being in that situation. “Of course I will. But, Danya… how do you have a son? You said he was adopted?”

Danya smiled. “Ah, well, that’s a long story.”

“I’d like to hear it. If he’s your son, he’s my family too. Right?”

“Of course,” Danya said. “It starts with a missing human boy. A two year old who got out of his house in the middle of the night and got very, very lost. The werewolves heard word of it in Lainton and tracked him across the border, and everyone fanned out in search parties. Mostly it was an effort by the werewolves, because they could sniff him down, but Simon took out this dog that drifted around between our settlements to see if he could be of any help. A dog named Jasper.”

“Like…?”

Danya nodded. “What do you know about the fae?”

“They’re the source of our magic.”

“Yes. They’re the source of all magic. They look like featureless figures of glowing light, and they have a habit of leading people towards danger. Not out of ill-will, but it is what tends to happen. If you see one, do not follow them. But, on this occasion, Simon did. The dog had wandered off some time ago and he knew the fae would lead him to the child.” Danya took a deep breath in and let it out. “And they did. Washed up on a riverbank, far downstream. Drowned.”

“ _ Oh _ ,” Fanner said. That wasn’t the direction he’d expected the story to take.

“He tried and he tried to revive him, but nothing worked. His body was blue and completely cold. So Simon turned to the fae who was still there, watching. He knew they could do all sorts of magical things. Surely bringing one recently dead child back to life wasn’t beyond them. So he stepped away from the child, and he gestured to him, and he begged the fae to do something. The fae approached the child and hovered near him but did nothing. And then the dog returned, and it barked at the fae and dashed towards them and then… and then Simon said there was a flash of bright like, and the dog let out a terrible yelp, and when Simon looked Jasper as he is now was in place of the drowned child and the dog. Alive.”

Fanner stared at Danya, wide eyed. “The fae combined them?”

Danya nodded. “Yes. Maybe that was the only way to bring the child back or maybe that’s just how the fae do things. Simon said Jasper seemed so confused by his own body, so afraid of everything, but when Simon picked him up Jasper clung to him. We tried to take him to his parents and explain things. They agreed to keep quiet about the situation, but they would not accept him as their son.”

“They didn’t want their own son back?”

“He didn’t remember them. Death seemed to have left him without much memory of being human and the dog, which did remember, was the dominant force in his mind. We took him back with us and Simon and I cared for him simply because Simon had been there with him from the start and Simon was who he felt safest with. We waited a few months, until he started talking and interacting a bit more like a human again, and then we brought him to his parents again. They still didn’t want him. Seeing him how he is now upset them and they asked us not to come back. So… we kept him, as our own son. They might not have been able to deal with the situation, but  _ we _ love him.”

“And… you call him by the dog’s name?”

Danya laughed. “We tried Henry, his human name, at first. Believe me. We loved that dog, but we felt like the human side of him was more important. But, like I said, he remembered being the dog. He still does, which seems odd considering he was such a young child at the time, but he was also an adult dog and those memories have stuck in a way that even other memories he’s made with us since haven’t. And, in those memories, he was Jasper. It’s an odd situation, because I never valued that dog like I value my son. But… it’s half of who he is, and in his mind it’s an equally important half.”

“I suppose that’s what matters. Who he feels he is.”

Danya smiled. “Exactly. I won’t say we were perfect and accepting and understood that right away, but he is, as far as we know, completely unique. We have to let him tell us who and what he is, because how can we possibly know?”

Fanner returned the smile. “Well, he’s very cute.”

“He is. I worry that not having parents of my own has left me struggling to be a parent myself, but Simon is a wonderful father. I think having Jasper has filled a hole in his life he hadn’t even been aware was there. He’s become so much more patient and somehow more relaxed, despite the extra stress that parenthood brings on.”

“Um… who is Simon, though?”

Danya laughed again. “Oh, yes, Simon. Well, he’s my husband.”

“Oh!” Fanner said. “You have been up to a lot these last few years.”

“Yes, though that part took only months.” Danya hesitated. “I’ll understand if you don’t like the sound of this, if you question my judgement or motivations, but… Simon is human. He was my master before I was freed.”

“The man in the military you were given to?”

Danya nodded. He held his hand up to show Fanner a ring. It had the head of a lion on it, just like the crest that had been tattooed on Danya’s body before he had left Milaine House.

Fanner didn’t know how he felt about that emotionally, but physically his chest felt tight and there was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Do you love him?”

“Of course I do. He never wanted a slave, but he protected me. He didn’t even have sex with me even though he found me attractive because he thought I wouldn’t want him to. I thought I did want him to, but I’m so glad he didn’t. That our first time together wasn’t until we were here, and I was free, and I could say yes and know it was fully my choice. He’s a  _ good _ man, Fanner. Not all humans are terrible.”

Fanner took a deep breath in and let it out. Yore had mentioned human friends from the military. Simon was likely one of them. If they both trusted him, if  _ everyone _ here did, maybe he wasn’t such a bad person. Fanner had only met Hamish briefly, but had seemed nice enough as well.

“I trust you,” Fanner said. “I’m a little surprised, but… if he makes you happy…”

“I don’t expect you to be comfortable with this right away,” Danya said. “Simon won’t either. He understands that part of living here, for him, is proving to each new person that he’s not like other humans. Even if some of them  _ want _ him to be. Just know that he, and multiple other humans, helped me try to find you. Most humans don’t care about us, but  _ some _ do.”

“No, I— I’m glad you’ve found happiness. Neither of us ever expected to, and you have, so. So that’s good. No matter what form it came in.”

“You’ll find it too. Maybe not right away, and maybe it won’t look anything like mine, but you’ll get there. I truly believe that.”

“Right now I’m not even sure I aspire to be happy. I just want to be  _ okay _ .”

Danya nodded. “It’s like that at first. It always gets better.”

Fanner hugged the stuffed dog against his stomach. He hoped so.


	21. Chapter 21

Fanner heard the sound of a child squeal, and a moment later a man with dark brown hair and a short beard entered the cabin carrying Jasper upside down. Hamish followed behind them.

Upside down, Jasper’s slightly wavy brown hair hung down far enough to brush the tips of his ears. He watched Fanner with big, brown eyes that lacked any whites.

Simon let out a breath of laughter and shook his head. “Yore really did find him. Incredible.”

“I know. After all our searching, Yore just stumbled upon him by accident. Fanner, this is Simon. My husband.”

Simon lifted Jasper so that he was right way up in his arms, cradled against his chest. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Fanner. Danya has told me a lot about you.”

“Oh, um! He told me about you, too. Just not, I mean. Not— Because— Um.” Fanner swallowed and looked away, trying to breathe normally. He was okay. This was Danya’s husband. He wouldn’t get cross at Fanner for stumbling over his words.

“Well, at least you got a little warning about the situation before I got here. I imagine it’s still quite confronting, though.”

Fanner nodded. He couldn’t speak. Simon seemed kind. Everyone here did. The more his anxiety abated, though, the more Fanner could feel exhaustion pressing in behind it. He had given up most of his sleep to heal Yore just a tiny bit last night and the fear he had felt over the last few days, and today in particular, had drained more from him than even the most intense physical demands could have.

Simon set Jasper on the ground as he went to have a murmured conversation with Danya. He brushed a hand against Danya’s face and Fanner looked away, giving them their privacy.

Jasper was watching him. No, he was looking at the plush dog.

Fanner held it up. “Is this yours?”

Jasper didn’t respond, but his eyes followed the toy.

Fanner held it out to him. “Do you want it?”

Jasper tensed as Fanner’s arm moved, then he went back to staring intently at the toy.

“He wants you to throw it,” Hamish said as he sat down against the wall next to the door, giving Fanner plenty of space.

“Like…?” Fanner pulled his arm back and made a slow throwing motion, though he kept hold of the toy.

Hamish smiled as he let his head fall back to rest against the wall. “Yeah. Like fetch.”

Fanner gently tossed the toy and Jasper caught it with ease. He picked it up in his mouth, approached Fanner on all fours, and dropped it in front of him. Fanner tossed it again, a bit more forcefully this time, and Jasper dashed off after it.

This time when he brought it back, Jasper lay down on the bedding in front of Fanner and half buried his face under his toy. Fanner wanted to stroke his soft little ears, but that was probably a strange thing to do to someone else’s child when you’d only just met them.

Jasper twisted a back leg to scratch at his side. Even his knees and hips weren’t quite human. They weren’t quite canine either, though. “I have fleas.”

“Oh!” Fanner said. “Well, I suppose that would be an issue when you’re covered in fur.”

Jasper lifted his toy off his face so that he could look at Fanner. “You shouldn’t eat fleas, you know.”

“Oh, um…”

“Or… poop. Or a lettuce. Or, um… or a dead thing. Like a little mouse, or a lizard, or um... something.”

“Okay.”

“Know why?”

Fanner could think of several reasons not to eat most of those things, but he couldn’t think of any that applied to all of them. At least not the lettuce. “No. Why?”

“You can get a  _ tabe _ worm.”

“Tapeworm,” Danya corrected.

“Tapeworm,” Jasper repeated.

“And you can’t get it from eating lettuce,” Danya added

“I don’t eat lettuce,” Jasper said, stretching his toy over his face again.

“Because you don’t like it. Not because it gives you worms.”

“Yeah.” Jasper lifted his dog off his face again and looked at Fanner. “Do you know what’s a tapeworm?”

Fanner could guess it was some kind of intestinal parasite, but he hadn’t heard of them before. He shook his head.

“It’s a big worm in your tummy and then it has babies and you poop the babies. And the big worm eats your tummy.”

“They don’t eat your tummy, buddy,” Hamish said. “They absorb nutrients from your gut.”

“What’s gut mean?”

“The long ropey bits inside an animal’s belly.”

“Hm.” Jasper rubbed his stomach. He rolled his head to look at Fanner again. “You can get some medicine to make them die. Some, um… a drink. But it’s hard to get. You have to only eat food someone gives you.  _ Only _ . Or a worm gets in your tummy.”

“Speaking of, why don’t we go clean you off and get you into some clean clothes for dinner?” Danya suggested.

Jasper put his toy in his mouth and mumbled something around it Fanner couldn’t make out.

“Well, we have guests, so you have to. You want to have guests, don’t you?”

Jasper made a slightly grumpy sound, but he held his arms up for Danya to pick him up.

“Oof, you’re getting too big to be picked up,” Danya said as he lifted him. He turned to Fanner. “Are you okay being alone with Simon and Hamish for a few minutes? I’ll just be in our bedroom through that door. It’s difficult to give Jas a proper bath every day with all his fur so I just clean him with my magic, but it does mean I have to be the one to do it.”

Fanner nodded. “Yes. I’ll be fine.”

He wasn’t afraid of the humans. At least not in a clear and direct sense where he expected them to harm him the second they got the opportunity. He just didn’t know how to interact with them. He couldn’t interact with them as a slave. Not here. But then as what? He didn’t know how to be anything else.

Maybe just as a person. He had started to feel that way around Yore. He had acted without regard for what he  _ should _ do and things had been fine. Here, with these new people, it felt like he’d forgotten how to do that all over again. He didn’t even know what to do with his hands now that Jasper had taken the toy away.

Simon sat down against the wall next to Hamish and heaved out a sigh. “I’m at the point, which I’m sure every parent inevitably reaches, where I’ll consider myself to have been a success as a parent if my son doesn’t grow up to eat poop.”

“Oh, um, yes,” Fanner said, brushing his hair behind his ear. “That sounded like, um. An issue. With the worms, I mean. If they’re hard to get rid of…”

“Mm, they’re not really. The werewolves have this herb that does the job. We just told him it was hard to get so that he wouldn’t eat gross things.”

“I heard that!” Jasper shouted from the next room. “I’m gonna eat poop!”

“Fuck,” Simon hissed. “Sometimes I forget how good his hearing is.”

“Fuck!” Jasper shouted.

Simon took a deep breath in and let it out. “I have revised my parenting goals, as I assume every parent inevitably does. I’ll consider myself a successful parent if my son does not eat poop when other people are looking and has the knowledge and responsibility to worm himself.”

“Well, I— I’m sure he can—”

“I’m joking,” Simon said before Fanner could worry himself too much. “I just want him to be safe and happy. To feel like he belongs and that his differences are something he’s valued for.”

Fanner nodded. He wished someone had felt the same way about him when he was a child.

“My own parents think I’m dead,” Simon said. “We weren’t close, so I never really thought much about it until Jas came into our lives. Now I think about how I would feel if something happened to Jasper and I wish I could trust them enough to let them know I’m okay. I wish I knew that, if I told them about the family and the happiness I’d found, they would be happy for me.”

“Must be so hard, having parents,” Hamish commented.

Simon shot him a look. “You have parents.”

Hamish held a hand out in Fanner’s direction.

“Oh,” Simon said as he looked back at Fanner. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to complain. I just think about these things a lot these days. I want to be a good father.”

“You  _ are _ a good father,” Danya assured him as he returned to the room, Jasper following close behind him on all fours with his toy still in his mouth. He was wearing fresh pants and his fur and hair looked clean and freshly brushed.

Jasper walked over and lay down with his head on Fanner’s leg, as though he had known him his entire life. Earlier, when Danya had asked whether he would protect Jasper if he were ever in a position where it was necessary, Fanner had answered as he would for any child. Now, looking down at this little boy innocently offering his trust without reservation, it felt much more personal. He would do anything to prevent harm from coming to this child.

There was a knock on the door and Hamish hauled himself to his feet to answer it. Carrying trays of food were a young mage woman and a Companion boy. The Companion looked no more than twelve or thirteen, only just old enough to be put up for sale.

The Companion watched Fanner, a frown on his face that felt almost hostile. After a few seconds he seemed to remember himself and he forced a smile. It didn’t look fake, exactly, but he seemed to have had to fight against something in himself to get there. Fanner did his best to return it.

“Ah, thanks!” Hamish said as he took the tray from the woman. “Fanner, this is Lynna. She’s our technology expert. And Kin… what do you do, Kin?”

Kin shot Hamish a glare as Simon took the tray of food from him. Hamish gave him a grin in return.

“Kin helps the other children with their lessons,” Danya offered. “He taught Jasper how to write his name. He can’t hold a pencil well enough yet, so he found some paints for him to use.”

Jasper took his toy out of his mouth and looked up at Fanner. “I’m really good at reading.”

“You can’t read at all!” Kin told him.

“I can! I can read my name!”

“That’s one word!”

“It’s a  _ big _ word!”

Kin fell silent, his lips pressing together in an angry line. He took a deep breath in and let it out. He seemed genuinely upset, but Jasper had already turned his attention back to his toy.

“Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, Fanner!” Lynna said. “I can’t believe Yore just found you like that. Though, if it was going to be someone, I’m not surprised it was him. You tend to end up helping people an awful lot when you’re always trying to. He saved my life once.”

He’d saved Fanner’s life, what, three times in as many days? Something like that. “He’s a very kind person. I’m very grateful not just that he saved me, but also that I’ve had his support over these last few days.”

That was probably the most words Fanner had said in front of anyone here but Danya so far, and he had actually managed to speak eloquently and smoothly for once, but he still felt weird, like he was doing this wrong.

“He’s a good friend.” Lynna offered him a gentle smile before turning to the others. “Well, we’ll get out of your way now and let you enjoy your dinner. It was nice meeting you, Fanner.”

“Yes, um. You too.”

Fanner missed Yore. It felt strange, to miss someone he hardly knew. The only other people he had ever  _ truly _ missed were Danya and Duran, and he certainly hadn’t become that attached to them in just a few days.

But Yore was different. He had made Fanner feel like maybe there were no wrong answers. He had let Fanner keep calling him sir until Fanner had felt comfortable stopping on his own. He doubted if he did that to Hamish or Simon right now it would go down well.

He had started to become comfortable just speaking his mind, no matter whether he stuttered over his words or spoke with more formality than the situation called for. Yore had accepted it all. 

Here, it felt like he was being judged. Not with the intention of rejecting or punishing him, of course. If anything, everyone was on the lookout for signs he might need help or support, indications that he was struggling. Maybe Yore had only been different because they were together temporarily, so Yore hadn’t thought he needed to solve all of Fanner’s problems.

But still, he had started to develop a fondness for the slight taste of just  _ being _ he had gotten in Yore’s presence. Maybe in the long run it wasn’t even what he needed, but it was exhausting to feel like every interaction was a test. Even if it was mostly only in his own mind.

And perhaps it was only in his own mind, because Yore had clearly been paying attention. He had to have been, because he had been responsive to Fanner’s needs and concerns. It had just felt different. Perhaps because it was just the two of them. You can’t be an outsider where there are only two people.

Lynna and Kin left and as Danya began setting up the table, Fanner noticed a problem. There were five people, but only four chairs.

“Oh, um. I can eat on the floor…” Fanner offered.

The look of gentle pity Danya sent his way only made Fanner feel worse, so he dropped his gaze.

“You’re our guest, Fanner,” Danya told him. “We would get another chair or someone else would sit on the floor before we asked you to. You’re not beneath  _ anyone _ . It’s not an issue, though. Sitting on chairs is uncomfortable for Jasper, so he never eats at the table anyway.”

“Oh,” Fanner said. That was it.  _ Oh _ . He could feel his mind shuttering and his body on high alert and he didn’t know what to do about it. He felt like he was building a teetering stack of blocks inside of himself and each action added another to the top of an already unstable pile. He didn’t know exactly where the limit lay or what would happen when he reached it.

He couldn’t eat. He would throw up if he tried. That much was clear to him from the moment he sat down. The food looked lovely — a chunky stew with some kind of flatbread for dipping — but Fanner’s stomach roiled at the thought of eating any of it.

His breathing was coming too fast and his throat felt tight. He tried taking a sip of water to calm himself down and nearly choked on it. What would they think of him if he refused to eat? It probably wasn’t easy to keep a place like this supplied. He would seem so ungrateful.

“Fanner…?” Danya asked, and Fanner jumped when Danya placed a hand on his arm.

Fanner looked up and met Danya’s gaze with wide eyes. He felt like he couldn’t breathe properly. Everything felt strange and distant.

“Okay,” Danya said gently, taking Fanner’s hand and standing from the table. He led Fanner away, through the door into the other room in the small cabin.

There was a bed in it large enough for two people and not much else. Danya shut the door behind them and guided Fanner down onto the bed.

“Try to breathe slowly,” Danya told him. “You’re okay. You’re safe and nobody is upset with you.”

Fanner nodded and did his best to follow Danya’s instructions. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You’ve been through a lot. It’s just catching up with you.”

Fanner nodded again. Breathing was becoming easier and now he just wanted to cry.

“You know, one thing I’m incredibly grateful for is that now when you’re upset I can tell you that you really are fine. That nobody’s cross and that everything will be okay. At Milaine House, it broke my heart to try to comfort you when you were upset because what could I say? Things were bad and as far as either of us could have known would only get worse.”

Fanner let out a shaky breath. “I appreciated it anyway. Thank you.”

“Do you want me to bring your food in here so that you can eat somewhere quieter?”

Fanner looked down and shook his head. “I don’t think I can eat. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Fanner. It’s not your fault. Do you want to sleep?”

Fanner nodded.

“Okay. You can sleep in here. I’ll come and join you later and Simon can sleep in the other room with Jasper tonight.”

“He won’t mind? I don’t want to kick him out of his bed…”

“He won’t. I promise. He’s not some human you need to be careful not to cause any trouble for. He’s your brother in law. He’s  _ family _ .”

Fanner nodded, but it was hard to convince himself that such a thing could possibly be true. He wasn’t even sure the fundamental concept of family was something he was capable of fully processing. At least not yet.

“I know. It’s hard to adjust.” Danya stood up from the bed and gave Fanner a melancholic smile. “I’m so glad we found you, Fanner. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Fanner’s brain felt like it was abuzz with anxiety and everything that had happened over the last few days trying to force itself to the forefront of his mind all at once. Even after Danya was gone and he had laid down in the dark, he didn’t expect sleep to come for him any time soon. That was one of the last coherent thoughts he had before he drifted into a deep and much needed sleep.


	22. Chapter 23

Fanner stood in the middle of a dark forest. He could see the shadowy outlines of the trees in front of him and nothing else. He threw up a ball of magelight, but no matter how big or bright he made it or where he sent it the light illuminated no more than a single candle would have.

There was a rustling sound from behind him and Fanner turned and squinted into the darkness. Glowing eyes watched him from the depths of the shadows. Fanner ran, somehow managing to keep a steady footing and not run headfirst into trees despite having almost no visibility. But maybe that wasn’t so astounding, because he felt like even though he was running as fast as he could he wasn’t moving very quickly at all. Whatever was chasing him was catching up.

Something leapt on Fanner and knocked him to the ground, but when he looked up it wasn’t a monster that was pressing down on him. It was Whelan, a knife gripped in his hand. As Whelan struck out with the knife, Fanner grabbed hold of his wrist and  _ pulled _ .

Fanner had pulled just enough energy from Whelan to get a taste of just how shallow a pool he was dipping into when he felt a sharp pain in his arm and released the grip he had on Whelan’s wrist. Or… had it been Whelan’s? Fanner’s hand had easily encircled the wrist, and that energy…

Fanner lay in a bed, in a dark room now illuminated by magelight. A crying child was trying to scrabble over him to get to his father. Fanner’s arm was bleeding. Jasper had bitten him.

Danya pulled his son into his arms and blinked as his eyes adjusted to his magelight. “Jasper, did you  _ bite _ him?”

“He— he grabbed me!” Jasper said between gasping sobs.

“That’s not a good reason to bite him. You’d be a bit confused too if you woke up to someone climbing over you, wouldn’t you?” Danya leant in to get a closer look at Fanner’s arm and drew a breath in through his teeth. “I’m sorry about this. He doesn’t usually bite.”

Simon appeared in the doorway, dressed only in his underwear and rubbing at his eye. “What happened?”

“Jasper tried to crawl over Fanner to get to me, that startled Fanner and I guess he grabbed Jas or something in his sleep, and Jas bit him,” Danya explained. “Can you take him? I need to clean and bandage the bite.”

“I’m fine,” Fanner said, covering the bite mark with his hand.

“I’m sure you would heal on your own, but it’s much nicer to take care of your wounds properly. Here, Jas, go to Simon.”

Danya handed off Jasper and led Fanner out into the main room. He sat him down on the floor and went and got some bandages before sitting down next to him.

Fanner looked down at the bite mark on his arm. If Jasper hadn’t bitten him…

Fanner would have killed him. He had no doubt about that. He had felt how shockingly shallow the pool of Jasper’s energy was. It would have taken just a couple of seconds. Had biting Fanner just been an overreaction, or had Jasper known, on some level, that he was in genuine danger?

He had to tell Danya. He deserved to know and to have the opportunity to get Fanner as far away from his family as he felt necessary. But how did you just tell someone that you nearly killed their child? It didn’t matter that it had been an accident. 

Danya used his magic to clean out the wound and then gently bandaged it up. It was a minor enough wound that it would be healed by morning.

“I know you’ll be fine, but I’m really sorry for this added drama,” Danya told him. “You’re already stressed enough.”

“It’s fine,” Fanner murmured. He needed to tell Danya, but he simply couldn’t. His brain refused to even come up with the words he needed to say.

“Let’s go back to bed,” Danya suggested. “You need the rest.”

“Um, maybe you should sleep in the bed with Simon and Jasper?” Fanner offered. “I can sleep out here.”

Danya hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t hesitate to wake me up if you need anything.”

Fanner nodded. He waited as Danya went into the other room and then as soon as the door was closed he sighed and let his eyes fall shut. What was he doing? What was he  _ going _ to do?

Maybe they could move him into a house with no children and put a lock on the door to the room he slept in and avoid this situation ever repeating itself, but who was to say that the next accident with his magic would look like this? Perhaps he would accidentally lash out because someone startled him or because he became injured in some accident or wild creature attack and his body decided it needed to steal some energy in order to save himself. If he hadn’t predicted this, why should he think he could predict and avert everything else that could possibly go wrong?

Fanner got up and quietly snuck to the front door. He didn’t even want to be in this house anymore. It didn’t feel right. He opened the door, slid out, and shut it behind himself.

He went to the railing that surrounded the tiny front porch, leant on it, and hung his head. What was he going to do? He was dangerous. If staying here meant putting Jasper or another child at risk, he couldn’t do it.

But what could he do? If Yore were here he thought he could muster up the courage to explain what had happened to him and ask him for help, for somewhere else to stay, but he wasn’t here and nobody would take Fanner to him if they thought he wanted to bother him just because he had formed an unhealthy attachment to him. Maybe Yore would visit in a few days, but things wouldn’t be safe in the meantime if he didn’t tell Danya what had happened so that they could take precautions.

He knew talking to Danya was the correct move, that it was the sensible way to resolve this situation, but the thought of it made him want to throw up. Slaves were typically quite conflict averse and fearful of disappointing people, but that had always run deeper for Fanner than it did for most.

It was about more than just being a good slave or avoiding punishment. Disappointing another slave made him feel just as awful as disappointing a human. In a way, he was much more afraid of the way it made him feel than he was of any more tangible consequences. Just the thought of sitting down with Danya and telling him that he had almost killed his son made his heart race and his breathing speed up. He wasn’t sure he was physically capable of making himself do it. But if he didn’t…

Fanner heard something move in the darkness and his head jerked up. He held as still as he could as he stared out in the direction the sound had come from.

He squinted his eyes. It was hard to tell what was real and what was his brain inventing pictures out of shadows. Was that… a person? No, surely not. People didn’t stand like that. Was he just imagining there was something there?

The figure moved and Fanner took a startled breath in and jolted backwards. He should go back inside. He should tell someone. He should shout out a warning. Whatever the thing in the darkness was, it wasn’t human and it was stalking towards him.

And then, familiarity struck him. The shape of the creature, the way it moved. Fanner let out a long breath. “Okay, Cookie. You got me that time.”

Cookie let out a quiet, friendly chitter in response.

“Well, I don’t appreciate you scaring me, but I  _ am _ glad to see you. Where have you been?”

Cookie didn’t respond. Instead, she wrapped her entire mouth around one of the pickets of the small fence that surrounded the cabin’s front garden and gave it a good, thorough investigation with her mouth.

“Gross,” Fanner commented.

Cookie started to wander off, strolling with no great hurry back into the darkness from where she’d come.

“Wait!” Fanner called out, but she showed no sign she’d heard him. 

Fanner followed.

“Wait,” Fanner hissed when he caught up with her. “Where are you going?”

She rubbed her clammy head against his hand.

“You keep finding me. Do… do you know where Yore is? Could you take me to him?”

Cookie chittered.

“Is that a yes?” Fanner let out a breathy laugh. “I don’t even know if you can hear me…”

But she kept walking and Fanner kept following, between rows of houses, out past an empty, well lit boundary around the edge of the settlement, and into the woods. 

Fanner kept one hand on Cookie’s shoulder. Being out here at night, not knowing what horrors might lurk in the darkness, terrified him. He kept walking anyway. The idea of telling Danya what he had almost done scared him far more.


	23. Chapter 23

Fanner followed Cookie through the dark woods. It was eerily reminiscent of his nightmare, at least until they got far enough from the settlement that Fanner felt safe throwing up a ball of magelight and it properly illuminated their surroundings. Interestingly Cookie also walked much more confidently now that they had light. Despite her lack of eyes, she didn’t seem unaffected by darkness.

Fanner had assumed she navigated by echolocation or something. He didn’t really know what that was, but he had read a book that said that was how bats avoided obstacles and found food in the dark.

The woods were less scary now that they had light, but Fanner was well aware that this was still extremely dangerous. There could be monsters lurking anywhere.

But… maybe these areas were less dangerous than some of the ones he had travelled through with Yore? He didn’t understand everything very well yet, but it seemed like there were some territories that were actively inhabited by a group, like the area The Inn had been in or the area Yore lived in, and others that were blocked by natural barriers. It was the latter that they had run into danger in, both times.

Though, actually, Fanner wasn’t sure whose territory he was in right now, if anybody’s. In the dark, with Cookie leading him on a winding path through the cabins, he hadn’t really known which direction they’d exited the settlement from. Maybe she was just leading him deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

This was a bad idea. He was going to get himself killed. But… maybe that was fine. Maybe he didn’t care all that much anymore. As long as it was quick. Death was better than becoming a dangerous burden. It still made him feel sick to think about the fact that he’d killed Whelan, but if he had killed a child, if he had killed his  _ own nephew _ ... How could he have lived with that? If Jasper hadn’t bitten him, he would have done it.

Cookie just kept walking. Every now and then she’d turn and lead him off in a slightly different direction, but she seemed to be moving purposefully. She was taking him  _ somewhere _ … probably?

They crossed a shallow stream, scrambled up a rocky hill, and then Cookie stopped and chittered. Something stirred at the edge of the shadows.

A breath caught in Fanner’s throat and he took a step back as he pushed his magelight forward, illuminating a large, naked man. The man lifted a bloody hand clutching a knife up to shield his eyes from the light. Fanner wanted to run, but Cookie stood calm and still at his side. He put a hand on her clammy shoulder and held on tight.

The man blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light and lowered his hand. “Oh, hey. What’re you doing out here?”

Fanner couldn’t speak. Should he run? There was a naked, bloody man holding a knife in front of him, but he seemed… friendly?

“Oh, you’re Fanner, right?” the man asked. “Danya’s brother?”

How did  _ everyone _ know who he was? Fanner nodded.

“Yeah, Yore told me what happened. Crazy.” He scratched his nose and then made a face when he remembered the blood on his hands. “Oh, Yore’s my brother, by the way.”

“Oh!” Fanner said. That made sense. Yore was a very large man and this man was also quite big.

“Nice to meet ya. I’m Slone.” Slone looked down at himself and grimaced. “Sorry, I don’t blame you for bein’ scared. I’m a bit of a mess. I got a deer I was in the middle of gutting.”

Fanner guided his magelight further towards Slone and it illuminated the figure of a deer hanging from a tree behind him.“Oh! I’m Sorry, I—”

“Nah, nah, it’s fine. No trouble. Is that Cookie, is it?”

Fanner looked down at Cookie and nodded.

“Yeah, Yore told me about her, too. Nice meeting you as well, Cookie.”

Cookie chittered. So she could hear, then?

“So, Fanner, what brings you out here in the middle of the night?”

“Oh, um, I was looking for Yore, actually,” Fanner said. “Could you, um— would I— c-can I see him?”

“Ah, hm…” Slone said.

“Okay,” a voice said from behind Fanner, and he jumped and turned around. “I guess it’s about time I showed myself.”

It was Hamish. Had he followed him all the way from the settlement?

“Hey, Hamish,” Slone said. “Wasn’t sure I should say anything about you lurking in the bushes.”

“I thought you probably knew I was there,” Hamish said. “Sorry, Fanner. I was on watch when I saw you sneak out. I wanted to know what you were up to.”

“I—I just want to see Yore,” Fanner said. “ _ Please _ .”

“So urgently it couldn’t wait until morning?”

Fanner dropped his gaze. “I didn’t think anybody would take me.”

“I suppose it would depend on why you want to see him. We want to help you and I’m sure Yore does too, but he has a lot of other responsibilities.”

“It’s important. I promise. I wouldn’t bother him for no good reason.”

“Hmm,” Hamish said. “What do you think, Slone?”

“I reckon we should let him talk to Yore. Whatever this is about, he’s the best one to sort things out.”

“Agreed,” Hamish said. “Do you mind going with Slone, Fanner? I mean, you don’t really know me any better than you know him, but I’m not naked or covered in blood.”

“Oh, um, no, it’s okay,” Fanner said. “I can go with him. If he’s Yore’s brother, I’m sure he’s a good person.”

“I mean you’re not wrong in this case, but I’ve known some great people with some awful relatives,” Hamish commented. “Do you mind taking him, Slone? I know you’re sort of in the middle of something, but I don’t trust myself to find your settlement in the dark.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m not done with the deer yet, but I’m sure it’ll be— hey!” Slone said as they turned and found Cookie, awkwardly angled so that she could the entirety of one of its hind legs down her throat. There was a lizard that looked a bit like a gecko but was around the size of a small cat hanging from the side of the next tree over, watching her. It was light blue with black and white markings and it was emitting a gentle glow.

Cookie slid her mouth off the deer’s leg.

“Show off,” Hamish murmured.

“Sorry,” Fanner said. “She likes to put things in her mouth. I know it’s a bit gross, but she doesn’t have any teeth so she can’t do any real damage.”

“All right, I’ll trust you then, Cookie. If you keep yer mouth off it I’ll give you some of the offal. You like offal?”

“She seems to eat anything that fits down her throat. What about, um. Is the lizard…?”

“Ah, the lizard’s fine. They just eat bugs. Normally moths drawn to ‘em by their glow, but if you’re butchering something they’ll come on over and wait around to see if anything else is drawn in by the smell.”

“Oh, um. Don’t eat the lizard, okay, Cookie? It’s cute.”

Cookie chittered, sat down on the ground, and shoved a fistful of bloody dirt into her mouth from below where the deer was hanging.

“Huh. She really does eat everything,” Slone commented.

Hamish walked over to Cookie and patted her on the head. He lifted his hand, surprised at the feeling of her skin, and then patted her a few more times, enjoying the pap, pap, pap sound it made. “I’ll stay here and make sure there’s no mischief while you’re gone, then I should head back before everyone starts to wake up. I don’t want anyone to panic if they wake up and Fanner’s not there.”

Fanner dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry. I—I know I shouldn’t have, but I— I don’t know.”

“I’m not cross and I don’t think anyone else will be either, but it was a very dangerous idea. Okay?”

Fanner nodded.

“If there’s a problem, talk to someone next time. You’re not alone anymore, Fanner.”

Fanner took a shaky breath in. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, no, I’m not trying to tell you off. It’s just dangerous out here and it’s easy to get lost, especially at night.”

Fanner swallowed around a lump in his throat and nodded. He still couldn’t look at Hamish.

Hamish sighed. “Don’t worry about it. You go with Slone. I’ll stay here and maybe Cookie can give me some tips on deep throating.”

Fanner wasn’t sure what that last part meant, but he was fairly sure it was a joke so he ignored it. “Thank you. And thank you for making sure I was safe.”

“No problem. Say hi to Yore for me.”

Slone stabbed his knife into the side of a tree and looked down at his hands. “Hm.”

“Oh, can I…?” Fanner reached out.

“Oh, sure,” Slone said, offering Fanner his hands so that he could brush away the blood with his magic. Slone smiled. “That’s so useful. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Fanner murmured.

“All right, ready to go?”

Fanner nodded. “Yes. I’m ready.”


End file.
